
Qass. 



Book 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT 



STORIES OF INVENTORS 



BOOKS BY 
RUSSELL DOUBLEDAY 

A GUNNER ABOARD THE "YANKEE' 
CATTLE RANCH TO COLLEGE 
A YEAR IN A YAWL 
STORIES OF INVENTORS 



THE TRUE ADVENTURE SERIES 




L 



STORIES OF 
INVENTORS 

THE ADVENTURES OF 
INVENTORS AND ENGINEERS. 

TRUE INCIDENTS AND 
PERSONAL EXPERIENCES 

By 

RUSSELL DOUBLEDAY 




NEW YORK 

DOUBLEDAY PAGE Zr CO. 

1904 



< { V 



I 



AUG 81 1904 

Ooovrifht Entry 



Copyright, 1904, by 

Doubleday, Page & Company 

Published, September, 1904 




Co 
J. M. D. 



ACKNOWLEDGMENT 

The author and publishers take pleasure in acknowledging 
the courtesy of 

The Scientific American 

The r Booklo t vers Magazine 

The Holiday Magazine, and 

Messrs. Wood & Nathan Company 
for the use of a number of illustrations in this book. 

From The Scientific American, illustrations facing pages 16, 
48, 78, 80, 88, 94, 118, 126, 142, and 162. 

From The Booklovers Magazine, illustrations facing pages 
184, 190, 194, and 196. 

From The Holiday Magazine, illustrations facing pages 100 
and no. 



CONTENTS 



How Guglielmo Marconi Telegraphs Without 

Wires .... 

Santos-Dumont and His Air-Ship 
How a Fast Train Is Run 
How Automobiles Work . 
The Fastest Steamboats 
The Life-Savers and Their Apparatus 
Moving Pictures — Some Strange Subjects and 

How They Were Taken . 
Bridge Builders and Some of Their Achieve 

ments ....... 

Submarines in War and Peace 
Long-Distance Telephony — What Happens When 

You Talk into a Telephone Receiver 
A Machine That Thinks — A Type-Setting 

Machine That Makes Mathematical Calcula 

tions 



i 

27 
5i 
67 

85 
97 

113 

I3i 
153 

181 



199 



How Heat Produces Cold — Artificial Ice-Making 209 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 



Marconi Reading a Message 



/ 



Frontispiece 



FACING PAGE 



Marconi Station at Wellfleet, Massachusetts 

The Wireless Telegraph Station at Glace 
Bay 

Santos-Dumont Preparing for a Flight 

Rounding the Eiffel Tower 

The Motor and Basket of "Santos-Dumont 
No. 9" 

Firing a Fast Locomotive . 

Track Tank 

Railroad Semaphore Signals 

Thirty Years' Advance in Locomotive 
Building 

The " Lighthouse " of the Rail . 

A Giant Automobile Mower-Thrasher 

An Automobile Buckboard 

An Automobile Plow 

The Velox, of the British Navy 

The Engines of the Arrow 

A Life-Saving Crew Drilling 



/ 



16* 

3° 

/ 
40 

48 

54 
60 
60 

64 

72 
78 
80 
84 
88 

94 

100 ' 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS— Continued 

FACING PAGB A 

Life-Savers at Work . . . .no 

Biograph Pictures of a Military Hazing . n8 v 

Developing Moving-Picture Films . . 126 f 

Building an American Bridge in Burmah 134V 

Viaduct Across Canyon Diablo . . . 142 .< 

Beginning an American Bridge in Mid- 
Africa .150- 

Lake's Submarine Torpedo-Boat Protector 162 y , 

Speeding at the Rate of 102 Miles an Hour 168 . 

Singing Into the Telephone . . .176 

"Central" Telephone Operators at Work 184 

Central Making Connections . . . 190' 

The Back of a Telephone Switchboard 

A Few Telephone Trunk Wires 

The Lanston Type-Setter Keyboard . 200 

Where the "Brains" are Located . . 206 



The Type Moulds and the Work They 
Produce 



194/ 
196 y 



210 * 



INTRODUCTION 

There are many thrilling incidents — all the 
more attractive because of their truth — in 
the study, the trials* the disappointments, the 
obstacles overcome, and the final triumph of the 
successful inventor. 

Every great invention, afterward marvelled 
at, was first derided. Each great inventor, 
after solving problems in mechanics or chemistry, 
had to face the jeers of the incredulous. 

The story of James Watt's sensations when 
the driving-wheels of his first rude engine 
began to revolve will never be told; the visions 
of Robert Fulton, when he purled up the Hudson, 
of the fleets of vessels that would follow the 
faint track of his little vessel, can never be put 
in print. 

It is the purpose of this book to give, in a 
measure, the adventurous side of invention. 
The trials and dangers of the builders of the 
submarine; the triumphant thrill of the in- 
ventor who hears for the first time the vibration 
of the long-distance message through the air; 
xi 



INTRODUCTION 

the daring and tension of the engineer who drives 
a locomotive at one hundred miles an hour. 

The wonder of the mechanic is lost in the 
marvel of the machine ; the doer is overshadowed 
by the greatness of his achievement. 

These are true stories of adventure in inven- 
tion. 



xn 



HOW GUGLIELMO MARCONI TELE- 
GRAPHS WITHOUT WIRES 



STORIES OF INVENTORS 

HOW GUGLIELMO MARCONI TELE- 
GRAPHS WITHOUT WIRES 

A NINETEEN- YEAR-OLD boy, just a quiet, 
•* ^ unobtrusive young fellow, who talked little 
but thought much, saw in the discovery of an 
older scientist the means of producing a revolu- 
tionising invention by which nations could talk 
to nations without the use of wires or tangible 
connection, no matter how far apart they might 
be or by what they might be separated. The 
possibilities of Guglielmo (William) Marconi's 
invention are just beginning to be realised, and 
what it has already accomplished would seem 
too wonderful to be true if the people of these 
marvellous times were not almost surfeited 
with wonders. 

It is of the boy and man Marconi that this 
chapter will tell, and through him the story of 
his invention, for the personality, the talents, 
and the character of the inventor made wireless 
telegraphy possible. 

3 



STORIES OF INVENTORS 

It was an article in an electrical journal de- 
scribing the properties of the "Hertzian waves" 
that suggested to young Marconi the possibility 
of sending messages from one place to another 
without wires. Many men doubtless read the 
same article, but all except the young Italian 
lacked the training, the power of thought, and 
the imagination, first to foresee the great things 
that could be accomplished through this dis- 
covery, and then to study out the mechanical 
problem, and finally to steadfastly push the 
work through to practical usefulness. 

It would seem that Marcotfi was not the kind 
of boy to produce a revolutionising invention, 
for he was not in the least spectacular, but, on 
the contrary, almost shy, and lacking in the 
aggressive enthusiasm that is supposed to mark 
the successful inventor; quiet determination 
was a strong characteristic of the young Italian, 
and a studious habit which had much to do 
with the great results accomplished by him at 
so early an age. 

He was well equipped to grapple with the 
mighty problem which he had been the first 
to conceive, since from early boyhood he had 
made electricity his chief study, and a com- 
fortable income saved him from the grind- 
ing struggle for bare existence that many 
4 



TELEGRAMS WITHOUT WIRES 

inventors have had to endure. Although born 
in Bologna (in 1874) and bearing an Italian 
name, Marconi is half Irish, his mother being a 
native of Britain. Having been educated in 
Bologna, Florence, and Leghorn, Italy's schools 
may rightly claim to have had great influence 
in the shaping of his career. Certain it is, in 
any case, that he was well educated, especially 
in his chosen branch, w 

Marconi, like many other inventors, did not 
discover the means by which the end was 
accomplished; he used the discovery of other 
men, and turned their impractical theories and 
inventions to practical uses, and, in addition, 
invented many theories of his own. The man 
who does old things in a new way, or 
makes new uses of old inventions, is the one who 
achieves great things. And so it was the read- 
ing of the discovery of Hertz that started the 
boy on the train of thought and the series of 
experiments that ended with practical, every- 
day telegraphy without the use of wires. To 
begin with, it is necessary to give some idea of 
the medium that carries the wireless messages. 

It is known that all matter, even the most 

compact and solid of substances, is permeated 

by what is called ether, and that the vibrations 

that make light, heat, and colour are carried 

5 



STORIES OF INVENTORS 

by this mysterious substance as water carries 
the wave motions on its surface. This strange 
substance, ether, which pervades everything, 
surrounds everything, and penetrates all things, 
is mysterious, since it cannot be seen nor felt, 
nor made known to the human senses in any way ; 
colourless, odourless, and intangible in every 
way, its properties are only known through the 
things that it accomplishes that are beyond the 
powers of the known elements. Ether has been 
compared by one writer to jelly which, filling all 
space, serves as a setting for the planets, moons, 
and stars, and, in fact, all solid substances ; and 
as a bowl of jelly carries a plum, so all solid 
things float in it. 

Heinrich Hertz discovered that in addition 
to the light, heat, and colour waves carried by 
ether, this substance also served to carry 
electric waves or vibrations, so that electric 
impulses could be sent from one place to another 
without the aid of wires. These electric 
waves have been named "Hertzian waves," 
in honour of their discoverer; but it remained 
for Marconi, who first conceived their value, to 
put them to practical use. But for a year he did 
not attempt to work out his plan, thinking that 
all the world of scientists were studying the 
problem. The expected did not happen, how- 
6 




pq 



H 
H 

S i 

•J o 



* I 



TELEGRAMS WITHOUT WIRES 

ever. No news of wireless telegraphy reached 
the young Italian, and so he set to work at 
his father's farm in Bologna to develop his idea. 

And so the boy began to work out his 
great idea with a dogged determination to 
succeed, and with the thought constantly in 
mind spurring him on that it was more than 
likely that some other scientist was striving 
with might and main to gain the same end. 

His father's farm was his first field of opera- 
tions, the small beginnings of experiments that 
were later to stretch across many hundreds of 
miles of ocean. Set up on a pole planted at 
one side of the garden, he rigged a tin box to 
which he connected, by an insulated wire, his 
rude transmitting apparatus. At the other 
side of the garden a corresponding pole with 
another tin box was set up and connected with 
the receiving apparatus. The interest of the 
young inventor can easily be imagined as he 
sat and watched for the tick of his recording 
instrument that he knew should come from the 
flash sent across the garden by his companion. 
Much time had been spent in the planning 
and the making of both sets of instruments, and 
this was the first test; silent he waited, his 
nerves tense, impatient, eager. Suddenly the 
Morse sounder began to tick and burr-r-r; the 
7 



STORIES OF INVENTORS 

boy's eyes flashed, and his heart gave an 
exultant bound — the first wireless message had 
been sent and received, and a new marvel had 
been added to the list of world's wonders. 
The quiet farm was the scene of many succeed- 
ing experiments, the place having been put 
at his disposal by his appreciative father, and 
in addition ample funds were generously sup- 
plied from the same source. Different heights 
of poles were tried, and it was found that the 
distance could be increased in proportion to 
the altitude of the pole bearing the receiving 
and transmitting tin boxes or "capacities" — 
the higher the poles the greater distance the 
message could be sent. The success of Mar- 
coni's system depended largely on his receiving 
apparatus, and it is on account of his use of 
some of the devices invented by other men 
that unthinking people have criticised him. He 
adapted to the use of wireless telegraphy 
certain inventions that had heretofore been 
merely interesting scientific toys — curious little 
instruments of no apparent practical value 
until his eye saw in them a contributory means 
to a great end. 

Though Hertz caught the etheric waves on 
a wire hoop and saw the answering sparks 
jump across the unjoined ends, there was no 
8 



TELEGRAMS WITHOUT WIRES 

way to record the flashes and so read the 
message. The electric current of a wireless 
message was too weak to work a recording 
device, so Marconi made use of an ingenious 
little instrument invented by M. Branly, called 
a coherer, to hitch on, as it were, the stronger 
current of a local battery. So the weak current 
of the ether waves, aided by the stronger current 
of the local circuit, worked the recorder and 
wrote the message down. The coherer was a 
little tube of glass not as long as your finger, 
and smaller than a lead pencil, into each end of 
which was tightly fitted plugs of silver; the 
plugs met within a small fraction of an inch in 
the centre of the tube, and the very small space 
between the ends of the plugs was filled with 
silver and nickel dust so fine as to be almost as 
light as air. Though a small instrument, and 
more delicate than a clinical thermometer, it 
loomed large in the working-out of wireless 
telegraphy. One of the silver plugs of the 
coherer was connected to the receiving wire, 
while the other was connected to the earth 
(grounded). To one plug of the coherer also 
was joined one pole of the local battery, while 
the other pole was in circuit with the other 
plug of the coherer through the recording 
instrument. The fine dust-like silver and nickel 



STORIES OF INVENTORS 

particles in the coherer possessed the quality 
of high resistance, except when charged by 
the electric current of the ether waves; then 
the particles of metal clung together, cohered, 
and allowed of the passage of the ether waves' 
current and the strong current of the local 
battery, which in turn actuated the Morse 
sounder and recorder. The difficulty with this 
instrument was in the fact that the metal 
particles continued to cohere, unless shaken 
apart, after the ether waves' current was dis- 
continued. So Marconi invented a little device 
which was in circuit with the recorder and 
tapped the coherer tube with a tiny mallet at 
just the right moment, causing the particles to 
separate, or decohere, and so break the circuit 
and stop the local battery current. As no 
wireless message could have been received 
without the coherer, so no record or reading 
could have been made without the young 
Italian's improvement. 

In sending the message from one side of his 
father's estate at Bologna to the other the 
young inventor used practically the same 
methods that he uses to-day. Marconi's trans- 
mitting apparatus consisted of electric batteries, 
an induction coil by which the force of the 
current is increased, a telegrapher's key to 
10 



TELEGRAMS WITHOUT WIRES 

make and break the circuit, and a pair of brass 
knobs. The batteries were connected with the 
induction coil, which in turn was connected with 
the brass knobs; the telegrapher's key was 
placed between the battery and the coil. It 
was the boy scarcely out of his teens who 
worked out the principles of his system, but 
it took time and many, many experiments to 
overcome the obstacles of long-distance wireless 
telegraphy. The sending of a message across 
the garden in far-away Italy was a simple 
matter — the depressed key completed the elec- 
tric circuit created by a strong battery through 
the induction coil and made a spark jump 
between the two brass knobs, which in turn 
started the ether vibrating at the rate of 
three or four hundred million times a minute 
from the tin box on top of a pole. The 
vibrations in the ether circled wider and 
wider, as the circular waves spread from the 
spot where a stone is dropped into a pool, 
but with the speed of light, until they reached 
a corresponding tin box on top of a like pole on 
the other side of the garden; this box, and the 
wire connected with it, caught the waves, carried 
them down to the coherer, and, joining the 
current from the local battery, a dot or dash 
was recorded; immediately after, the tapper 
ii 



STORIES OF INVENTORS 

separated the metal particles in the coherer and 
it was ready for the next series of waves. 

One spark made a single dot, a stream of 
sparks the dash of the Morse telegraphic code. 
The apparatus was crude at first, and worked 
spasmodically, but Marconi knew he was on the 
right track and persevered. With the heighten- 
ing of the pole he found he could send farther 
without an increase of electric power, until 
wireless messages were sent from one extreme 
limit of his father's farm to the other. 

It is hard to realize that the young inventor 
only began his experiments in wireless telegraphy 
in 1895, an d that it is scarcely eight years since 
the great idea first occurred to him. 

After a year of experimenting on his father's 
property, Marconi was able to report to W. H. 
Preece, chief electrician of the British postal 
system, certain definite facts — not theories, but 
facts. He had actually sent and received 
messages, without the aid of wires, about two 
miles, but the facilities for further experiment- 
ing at Bologna were exhausted, and he went 
to England. 

Here was a youth (scarcely twenty-one), with 

a great invention already within his grasp — 

a revolutionising invention, the possibilities of 

which can hardly yet be conceived. And so 

12 



TELEGRAMS WITHOUT WIRES 

this young Italian, quiet, retiring, unassuming, 
and yet possessing Jove's power of sending 
thunderbolts, came to London (in 1896), 
to upbuild and link nation to nation more 
closely. With his successful experiments 
behind him, Marconi was well received in 
England, and began his further work with all 
the encouragement possible. Then followed 
a series of tests that were fairly bewildering. 
Messages were sent through brick walls — through 
houses, indeed — over long stretches of plain, 
and even through hills, proving beyond a doubt 
that the etheric electric waves penetrated 
everything. For a long time Marconi used 
modifications of the tin boxes which were a 
feature of his early trials, but later balloons 
covered with tin-foil, and then a kite six feet 
high, covered with thin metallic sheets, was 
used, the wire leading down to the sending and 
receiving instruments running down the cord. 
With the kite, signals were sent eight miles by 
the middle of 1897. Marconi was working on 
the theory that the higher the transmitting 
and receiving "capacity," as it was then called, 
or wire, or "antenna," the greater distance the 
message could be sent; so that the distance 
covered was only limited by the height of the 
transmitting and receiving conductors. This 
13 



STORIES OF INVENTORS 

theory has since been abandoned, great power 
having been substituted for great height. 

Marconi saw that balloons and kites, the play- 
things of the winds, were unsuitable for his 
purpose, and sought some more stable support 
for his sending and receiving apparatus. He 
set up, therefore (in November, 1897), at the 
Needles, Isle of Wight, a 120-foot mast, from the 
apex of which was strung his transmitting wire 
(an insulated wire, instead of a box, or large 
metal body, as heretofore used). This was the 
forerunner of all the tall spars that have since 
pointed to the sky, and which have been the 
centre of innumerable etheric waves bearing 
man's messages over land and sea. 

With the planting of the mast at the Needles 
began a new series of experiments which must 
have tried the endurance and determination of 
the young man to the utmost. A tug was 
chartered, and to the sixty-foot mast erected 
thereon was connected the wire and transmitting 
and receiving apparatus. From this little vessel 
Marconi sent and received wireless signals day 
after day, no matter what the state of the 
weather. With each trip experience was accum- 
ulated and the apparatus was improved; the 
moving station steamed farther and farther out 
to sea, and the ether waves circled wider and 
14 



TELEGRAMS WITHOUT WIRES 

wider, until, at the end of two months of 
sea-going, wireless telegraphy signals were 
received clear across to the mainland, fourteen 
miles, whereupon a mast was set up and a 
station established (at Bournemouth), and later 
eighteen miles away at Poole. 

By the middle of 1898 Marconi's wireless 
system was doing actual commercial service in 
reporting, for a Dublin newspaper, the events 
at a regatta at Kingstown, when about seven 
hundred messages were sent from a floating 
station to land, at a maximum distance of 
twenty-five miles. 

It was shortly afterward, while the royal 
yacht was in Cowes Bay, that one hundred 
and fifty messages between the then Prince of 
Wales and his royal mother at Osborne House 
were exchanged, most of them of a very private 
nature. 

One of the great objections to wireless tele- 
graphy has been the inability to make it secret, 
since the ether waves circle from the centre 
in all directions, and any receiving apparatus 
within certain limits would be affected by the 
waves just as the station to which the message 
was sent would be affected by them. To 
illustrate: the waves radiating from a stone 
dropped into a still pool would make a dead 
15 



STORIES OF INVENTORS 

leaf bob up and down anywhere on the pool 
within the circle of the waves, and so the 
ether waves excited the receiving apparatus of 
any station within the effective reach of the 
circle. 

Of course, the use of a cipher code would 
secure the secrecy of a message, but Marconi 
was looking for a mechanical device that would 
make it impossible for any but the station to 
which the message was sent to receive it. He 
finally hit upon the plan of focussing the ether 
waves as the rays of a searchlight are con- 
centrated in a given direction by the use of a 
reflector, and though this adaptation of the 
search-light principle was to a certain extent 
successful, much penetrating power was lost. 
This plan has been abandoned for one much more 
ingenious and effective, based on the principle 
of attunement, of which more later. 

It was a proud day for the young Italian 
when his receiver at Dover recorded the first 
wireless message sent across the British Channel 
from Boulogne in 1899 — just the letters V M and 
three or four words in the Morse alphabet of 
dots and dashes. He had bridged that space 
of stormy, restless water with an invisible, 
intangible something that could be neither 
seen, felt, nor heard, and yet was stronger and 
16 



I 



4 




TELEGRAMS WITHOUT WIRES 

surer than steel — a connection that nothing 
could interrupt, that no barrier could prevent. 
The first message from England to France was 
soon followed by one to M. Branly, the inventor 
of the coherer, that made the receiving of the 
message possible, and one to the queen of 
Marconi's country. The inventor's march of 
progress was rapid after this — stations were 
established at various points all around the 
coast of England; vessels were equipped with 
the apparatus so that they might talk to the 
mainland and to one another. England's great 
dogs of war, her battle-ships, fought an imaginary 
war with one another and the orders were flashed 
from the flagship to the fighters, and from the 
Admiral's cabin to the shore, in spite of fog and 
great stretches of open water heaving between. 

A lightship anchored off the coast of England 
was fitted with the Marconi apparatus and 
served to warn several vessels of impending 
danger, and at last, after a collision in the dark 
and fog, saved the men who were aboard of her 
by sending a wireless message to the mainland 
for help. 

From the very beginning Marconi had set a 

high standard for himself. He worked for an 

end that should be both commercially practical 

and universal. When he had spanned the 

i7 



STORIES OF INVENTORS 

Channel with his wireless messages, he immedi- 
ately set to work to fling the ether waves farther 
and farther. Even then the project of spanning 
the Atlantic was in his mind. 

On the coast of Cornwall, near Penzance, 
England, Marconi erected a great station. A 
forest of tall poles were set up, and from the 
wires strung from one to the other hung a whole 
group of wires which were in turn connected 
to the transmitting apparatus. From a little 
distance the station looked for all the world like 
ships' masts that had been taken out and 
ranged in a circle round the low buildings. 
This was the station of Poldhu, from which 
Marconi planned to send vibrations in the ether 
that would reach clear across to St. Johns, 
Newfoundland, on the other side of the Atlantic 
— more than two thousand miles away. A 
power-driven dynamo took the place of the 
more feeble batteries at Poldhu, converters to 
increase the power displaced the induction 
coil, and many sending-wires, or antennas, were 
used instead of one. 

On Signal Hill, at St. Johns, Newfoundland — 
a bold bluff overlooking the sea — a group of men 
worked for several days, first in the little stone 
house at the brink of the bluff, setting up 
some electric apparatus; and later, on the flat 
18 



TELEGRAMS WITHOUT WIRES 

ground nearby, the same men were very busy 
flying a great kite and raising a balloon. There 
was no doubt about the earnestness of these 
men: they were not raising that kite for fun. 
They worked with care and yet with an eager- 
ness that no boy ever displays when setting his 
home-made or store flyer to the breeze. They 
had hard luck: time and time again the wind 
or the rain, or else the" fog, baffled them, but a 
quiet young fellow with a determined, thought- 
ful face urged them on, tugged at the cord, or 
held the kite while the others ran with the line. 
Whether Marconi stood to one side and directed 
or took hold with his men, there was no doubt 
who was master. At last the kite was flying 
gallantly, high overhead in the blue. From the 
sagging kite-string hung a wire that ran into 
the low stone house. 

One cold December day in iqoi, Guglielmo 
Marconi sat still in a room in the Government 
building at Signal Hill, St. Johns, Newfoundland, 
with a telephone receiver at his ear and his 
eye on the clock that ticked loudly nearby. 
Overhead flew his kite bearing his receiving- 
wire. It was 12:30 o'clock on the American 
side of the ocean, and Marconi had ordered his 
operator in far-off Poldhu, two thousand watery 
miles away, to begin signalling the letter "S" — 
19 



STORIES OF INVENTORS 

three dots of the Morse code, three flashes of 
the bluish sparks — at that corresponding hour. 
For six years he had been looking forward to 
and working for that moment — the final test of 
all his effort and the beginning of a new triumph. 
He sat waiting to hear three small sounds, 
the br-br-br of the Morse code "S," humming 
on the diaphragm of his receiver — the signature 
of the ether waves that had travelled two 
thousand miles to his listening ear. As the 
hands of the clock, whose ticking alone broke 
the stillness of the room, reached thirty minutes 
past twelve, the receiver at the inventor's ear 
began to hum, br-br-br, as distinctly as the 
sharp rap of a pencil on a table — the unmistak- 
able note of the ether vibrations sounded in 
the telephone receiver. The telephone receiver 
was used instead of the usual recorder on 
account of its superior sensitiveness. 

Transatlantic wireless telegraphy was an 
accomplished fact. 

Though many doubted that an actual signal 
had been sent across the Atlantic, the scientists 
of both continents, almost without exception, 
accepted Marconi's statement. The sending 
of the transatlantic signal, the spanning of the 
wide ocean with translatable vibrations, was a 
great achievement, but the young Italian bore 
20 



TELEGRAMS V/ITHOUT WIRES 

his honours modestly, and immediately went 
to work to perfect his system. 

Two months after receiving the message from 
Poldhu at St. Johns, Marconi set sail from 
England for America, in the Philadelphia, to 
carry out, on a much larger scale, the experi- 
ments he had worked out with the tug three 
years ago. The steamship was fitted with a 
complete receiving and sending outfit, and soon 
after she steamed out from the harbor she 
began to talk to the Cornwall station in the dot- 
and-dash sign language. The long-distance talk 
between ship and shore continued at intervals, 
the recording instrument writing the messages 
down so that any one who understood the Morse 
code could read. Message after message came 
and went until one hundred and fifty miles of 
sea lay between Marconi and his station. Then 
the ship could talk no more, her sending appara- 
tus not being strong enough; but the faithful 
men at Poldhu kept sending messages to their 
chief, and the recorder on the Philadelphia kept 
taking them down in the telegrapher's short- 
hand, though the steamship was plowing 
westward at twenty miles an hour. Day after 
day, at the appointed hour to the very second, 
the messages came from the station on land, 
flung into the air with the speed of light, to the 
21 



STORIES OF INVENTORS 

young man in the deck cabin of a speeding 
steamship two hundred and fifty, five hundred, 
a thousand, fifteen hundred, yes, two thousand 
and ninety-nine miles away — messages that were 
written down automatically as they came, 
being permanent records that none might gain- 
say and that all might observe. 

To Marconi it was the simple carrying out of 
his orders, for he said that he had fitted the 
Poldhu instruments to work to two thousand 
one hundred miles, but to those who saw the 
thing done — saw the narrow strips of paper come 
reeling off the recorder, stamped with the blue 
impressions of the messages through the air, it 
was astounding almost beyond belief ; but there 
was the record, duly attested by those who 
knew, and clearly marked with the position of 
the ship in longitude and latitude at the time 
they were received. 

It was only a few months afterward that 
Marconi, from his first station in the United 
States, at Wellfleet, Cape Cod, Mass., sent 
a message direct to Poldhu, three thousand 
miles. At frequent intervals messages go from 
one country to the other across the ocean, 
carried through fog, unaffected by the winds, 
and following the curvature of the earth, without 
the aid of wires. 

22 



TELEGRAMS WITHOUT WIRES 

Again the unassuming nature of the young 
Italian was shown. There was no brass band 
nor display of national colours in honour of the 
great achievement; it was all accomplished 
quietly, and suddenly the world woke up to 
find that the thing had been done. Then the 
great personages on both sides of the water 
congratulated and complimented each other 
by Marconi's wireless system. 

At Marconi's new station at Glace Bay, Cape 
Breton, and at the powerful station at Wellfleet, 
Cape Cod, the receiving and sending wires are 
supported by four great towers more than two 
hundred feet high. Many wires are used instead 
of one, and much greater power is of course 
employed than at first, but the marvellously 
simple principle is the same that was used in 
the garden at Bologna. The coherer has been 
displaced by a new device invented by Marconi, 
called a magnetic detector, by which the ether 
waves are aided by a stronger current to record 
the message. The effect is the same, but the 
method is entirely different. 

The sending of a long-distance message is a 
spectacular thing. Current of great power is 
used, and the spark is a blinding flash accom- 
panied by deafening noises that suggest a 
volley from rifles. But Marconi is experiment- 
23 



STORIES OF INVENTORS 

ing to reduce the noise, and the use of the mer- 
cury vapour invented by Peter Cooper Hewitt 
will do much to increase the rapidity in sending. 

After much experimenting Marconi discovered 
that the longer the waves in the ether the 
more penetrating and lasting the quality they 
possessed, just as long swells on a body of 
water carry farther and endure longer than 
short ones. Moreover, he discovered that if 
many sending- wires were used instead of one, 
and strong electric power was employed instead 
of weak, these long, penetrating, enduring 
waves could be produced. All the new Marconi 
stations, therefore, built for long-distance work, 
are fitted with many sending-wires, and powerful 
dynamos are run which are capable of producing 
a spark between the silvered knobs as thick as 
a man's wrist. 

Marconi and several other workers in the 
field of wireless telegraphy are now busy experi- 
menting on a system of attunement, or syntony, 
by which it will be possible to so adjust the 
sending instruments that none but the receiver 
for whom the message is meant can receive it. 
He is working on the principle whereby one 
tuning-fork, when set vibrating, will set another 
of the same pitch humming. This problem is 
practically solved now, and in the near future 
24 



TELEGRAMS WITHOUT WIRES 

every station, every ship, and each installation 
will have its own key, and will respond to none 
other than the particular vibrations, wave 
lengths, or oscillations, for which it is adjusted. 

All through the wonders he has brought about, 
Marconi, the boy and the man, has shown but 
little — he is the strong character that does 
things and says little, and his works speak so 
amazingly, so loudly, that the personality of the 
man is obscured. 

The Marconi station at Glace Bay, Cape 
Breton, is now receiving messages for cableless 
transmission to England at the rate of ten cents 
a word — newspaper matter at five cents a word. 
Transatlantic wireless telegraphy is an everyday 
occurrence, and the common practical uses are 
almost beyond mention. It is quite within the 
bounds of possibility for England to talk clear 
across to Australia over the Isthmus of Panama, 
and soon France will be actually holding con- 
verse with her strange ally, Russia, across 
Germany and Austria, without asking the 
permission of either country. Ships talk to 
one another while in midocean, separated by 
miles of salt water. Newspapers have been 
published aboard transatlantic steamers with 
the latest news telegraphed while en route; 
indeed, a regular news service of this kind, at a 
25 



STORIES OF INVENTORS 

very reasonable rate, has been established. 
These are facts; what wonders the future has 
in store we can only guess. But these are 
some of the possibilities — news service supplied 
to subscribers at their homes, the important 
items to be ticked off on each private instru- 
ment automatically, " Marconigraphed " from 
the editorial rooms; the sending and receiving 
of messages from moving trains or any other 
kind of a conveyance; the direction of a sub- 
marine craft from a safe-distance point, or the 
control of a submarine torpedo. 

One is apt to grow dizzy if the imagination is 
allowed to run on too far — but why should not 
one friend talk to another though he be miles 
away, and to him alone, since his portable 
instrument is attuned to but one kind of vibra- 
tion. It will be like having a separate lan- 
guage for each person, so that "friend com- 
muneth with friend, and a stranger intermeddleth 
not — " and which none but that one person 
can understand. 



26 



SANTOS-DUMONT AND HIS AIR-SHIP 



SANTOS-DUMONT AND HIS 
AIR-SHIP 

THERE was a boy in far-away Brazil 
who played with his friends the game 
of "Pigeon Flies." 

In this pastime the boy who is "it" calls out 
"pigeon flies," or "bat flies," and the others 
raise their fingers; but if he should call "fox 
flies," and one of his mates should raise his 
hand, that boy would have to pay a forfeit. 

The Brazilian boy, however, insisted on 
raising his finger when the catchwords "man 
flies" were called, and firmly protested against 
paying a forfeit. 

Alberto Santos-Dumont, even in those early 
days, was sure that if man did not fly then he 
would some day. 

Many an imaginative boy with a mechanical 
turn of mind has dreamed and planned wonder- 
ful machines that would carry him triumphantly 
over the tree-tops, and when the tug of the 
kite-string has been felt has wished that it would 
pull him up in the air and carry him soaring 
29 



STORIES OF INVENTORS 

among the clouds. Santos-Dumont was just 
such a boy, and he spent much time in setting 
miniature balloons afloat, and in launching tiny 
air-ships actuated by twisted rubber bands. 
But he never outgrew this interest in overhead 
sailing, and his dreams turned into practical 
working inventions that enabled him to do 
what never a mortal man had done before — 
that is, move about at will in the air. 

Perhaps it was the clear blue sky of his native 
land, and the dense, almost impenetrable thickets 
below, as Santos-Dumont himself has suggested, 
that made him think how fine it would be to 
float in the air above the tangle, where neither 
rough ground nor wide streams could hinder. 
At any rate, the thought came into the 
boy's mind when he was very small, and it 
stuck there. 

His father owned great plantations and many 
miles of railroad in Brazil, and the boy grew 
up in the atmosphere of ponderous machinery 
and puffing locomotives. By the time Santos- 
Dumont was ten years old he had learned 
enough about mechanics to control the engines 
of his father's railroads and handle the machinery 
in the factories. The boy had a natural bent 
for mechanics and mathematics, and possessed 
a cool courage that made him appear almost 
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SANTOS-DUMONT AND HIS AIR-SHIP 

phlegmatic. Besides his inherited aptitude for 
mechanics, his father, who was an engineer of 
the Central School of Arts and Manufactures of 
Paris, gave him much useful instruction. Like 
Marconi, Santos-Dumont had many advantages, 
and also, like the inventor of wireless telegraphy, 
he had the high intelligence and determination 
to win success in spite of many discouragements. 
Like an explorer in aT strange land, Santos- 
Dumont was a pioneer in his work, each trial 
being different from any other, though the 
means in themselves were familiar enough. 

The boy Santos-Dumont dreamed air-ships, 
planned air-ships, and read about aerial naviga- 
tion, until he was possessed with the idea that 
he must build an air-ship for himself. 

He set his face toward France, the land of 
aerial navigation and the country where light 
motors had been most highly developed for 
automobiles. The same year, 1897, when he 
was twenty-four years old, he, with M. 
Machuron, made his first ascent in a spherical 
balloon, the only kind in existence at that 
time. He has described that first ascension 
with an enthusiasm that proclaims him a 
devotee of the science for all time. 

His first ascension was full of incident: a 
storm was encountered; the clouds spread 
3i 



STORIES OF INVENTORS 

themselves between them and the map-like 
earth, so that nothing could be seen except the 
white, billowy masses of vapour shining in the 
sun; some difficulty was experienced in getting 
down, for the air currents were blowing upward 
and carried the balloon with them; the tree- 
tops finally caught them, but they escaped by 
throwing out ballast, and finally landed in an 
open place, and watched the dying balloon as 
it convulsively gasped out its last breath of 
escaping gas. 

After a few trips with an experienced aeronaut, 
Santos-Dumont determined to go alone into 
the regions above the clouds. This was the 
first of a series of ascensions in his own balloon. 
It was made of very light silk, which he 
could pack in a valise and carry easily back to 
Paris from his landing point. In all kinds of 
weather this determined sky navigator went 
aloft; in wind, rain, and sunshine he studied 
the atmospheric conditions, air currents, and 
the action of his balloon. 

The young Brazilian ascended thirty times 
in spherical balloons before he attempted any 
work on an elongated shape. He realised that 
many things must be learned before he could 
handle successfully the much more delicate 
and sensitive elongated gas-bag. 
32 



SANTOS-DUMONT AND HIS AIR-SHIP 

In general, Santos-Dumont worked on the 
theory of the dirigible balloon — that is, one that 
might be controlled and made to go in any 
direction desired, by means of a motor and pro- 
peller carried by a buoyant gas-bag. His plan 
was to build a balloon, cigar-shaped, of sufficient 
capacity to a little more than lift his machinery 
and himself, this extra lifting power to be 
balanced by ballast, so that the balloon and 
the weight it carried would practically equal 
the weight of air it displaced. The push of the 
revolving propeller would be depended upon 
to move the whole air-ship up or down or 
forward, just as the motion of a fish's fins and 
tail move it up, down, forward, or back, its 
weight being nearly the same as the water it 
displaces. 

The theory seems so simple that it strikes 
one as strange that the problem of aerial 
navigation was not solved long ago. The story 
of Santos-Dumont 's experiments, however, his 
adventures and his successes, will show that 
the problem was not so simple as it seemed. 

Santos-Dumont was built to jockey a Pegasus 
or guide an air-ship , for he weighed but a hundred 
pounds when he made his first ascensions, and 
added very little live ballast as he grew older. 

Weight, of course, was the great bugbear of 

33 



STORIES OF INVENTORS 

every air-ship inventor, and the chief problem 
was to provide a motor light enough to furnish 
sufficient power for driving a balloon that 
had sufficient lifting capacity to support it and 
the aeronaut in the air. Steam-engines had 
been tried, but found too heavy for the power 
generated; electric motors had been tested, 
and proved entirely out of the question for the 
same reason. 

Santos-Dumont has been very fortunate in 
this respect, his success, indeed, being largely 
due to the compact and powerful gasoline 
motors that have been developed for use on 
automobiles. 

Even before the balloon for the first air-ship 
was ordered the young Brazilian experimented 
with his three-and-one-half horse-power gasoline 
motor in every possible way, adding to its 
power, and reducing its weight until he had cut 
it down to sixty-six pounds, or a little less than 
twenty pounds to a horse-power. Putting the 
little motor on a tricycle, he led the procession 
of powerful automobiles in the Paris-Amsterdam 
race for some distance, proving its power and 
speed. The motor tested to his satisfaction, 
Santos-Dumont ordered his balloon of the 
famous maker, Lachambre, and while it was 
building he experimented still further with his 
34 



SANTOS-DUMONT AND HIS AIR-SHIP 

little engine. To the horizontal shaft of his 
motor he attached a propeller made of silk 
stretched tightly over a light wooden frame- 
work. The motor was secured to the aeronaut's 
basket behind, and the reservoir of gasoline 
hung to the basket in front. All this was done 
and tested before the balloon was finished — in 
fact, the aeronaut hung himself up in his basket 
from the roof of his workshop and started his 
motor to find out how much pushing power it 
exerted and if everything worked satisfactorily. 

On September 18, 1898, Santos-Dumont 
made his first ascension in his first air-ship — in 
fact, he had never tried to operate an elongated 
balloon before, and so much of this first experi- 
ence was absolutely new. Imagine a great bag 
of yellow oiled silk, cigar-shaped, fully inflated 
with hydrogen gas, but swaying in the morning 
breeze, and tugging at its restraining ropes: 
a vast bubble eighty-two feet long, and twelve 
feel in diameter at its greatest girth. Such 
was the balloon of Santos-Dumont's first air- 
ship. Suspended by cords from the great gas- 
bag was the basket, to which was attached the 
motor and six-foot propeller, hung sixteen feet 
below the belly of the great air-fish. 

Many friends and curiosity seekers had 
assembled to see the aeronaut make his first 
35 



STORIES OF INVENTORS 

foolhardy attempt, as they called it. Never 
before had a spark-spitting motor been hung 
under a great reservoir of highly inflammable 
hydrogen gas, and most of the group thought 
the daring inventor would never see another 
sunset. Santos-Dumont moved around his 
suspended air-ship, testing a cord here and a 
connection there, for he well knew that his life 
might depend on such a small thing as a length 
of twine or a slender rod. At one side of a 
small open space on the outskirts of Paris 
the long, yellow balloon tugged at its fastenings , 
while the navigator made his final round to see 
that all was well. A twist of a strap around 
the driving-wheel set the motor going, and a 
moment later Santos-Dumont was standing 
in his basket, giving the signal to release the 
air-ship. It rose heavily, and travelling with 
the fresh wind, the propellers whirling swiftly, 
it crashed into the trees at the other side of the 
enclosure. The aeronaut had, against his better 
judgment, gone with the wind rather than 
against it, so the power of the propeller 
was added to the force of the breeze, and the 
trees were encountered before the ship could 
rise sufficiently to clear them. The damage 
was repaired, and two days later, September 20, 
1898, the Brazilian started again from the same 
36 



SANTOS-DUMONT AND HIS AIR-SHIP 

enclosure, but this time against the wind. 
The propeller whirled merrily, the explosions of 
the little motor snapped sharply as the great 
yellow bulk and the tiny basket with its human 
freight, the captain of the craft, rose slowly in 
the air. Santos-Dumont stood quietly in his 
basket, his hand on the controlling cords of the 
great rudder on the end of the balloon ; near at 
hand was a bag of loose sand, while small bags 
of ballast were packed around his feet. Steadily 
she rose and began to move against the wind 
with the slow grace of a great bird, while the 
little man in the basket steered right or left, up 
or down, as he willed. He turned his rudder 
for the lateral movements, and changed his 
shifting bags of ballast hanging fore and aft, 
pulling in the after bag when he wished to 
point her nose down, and doing likewise with 
the forward ballast when he wished to ascend — 
the propeller pushing up or down as she was 
pointed. For the first time a man had actual 
control of an air-ship that carried him. He 
commanded it as a captain governs his ship, 
and it obeyed as a vessel answers its helm. 

A quarter of a mile above the heads of the 
pygmy crowd who watched him the little 
South American maneuvered his air-ship, turn- 
ing circles and figure eights with and against 
37 



STORIES OF INVENTORS 

the breeze, too busy with his rudder, his vibrat- 
ing little engine, his shifting bags of ballast, and 
the great palpitating bag of yellow silk above 
him, to think of his triumph, though he could 
still hear faintly the shouts of his friends on 
earth. For a time all went well and he felt the 
exhilaration that no earth- travelling can ever 
give, as he experienced somewhat of the freedom 
that the birds must know when they soar 
through theair unfettered. As he descended to 
a lower, denser atmosphere he felt rather than 
saw that something was wrong — that there was 
a lack of buoyancy to his craft. The engine 
kept on with its rapid "phut, phut, phut" 
steadily, but the air-ship was sinking much 
more rapidly than it should. Looking up, the 
aeronaut saw that his long gas-bag was beginning 
to crease in the middle and was getting flabby, 
the cords from the ends of the long balloon 
were beginning to sag, and threatened to catch 
in the propeller. The earth seemed to be leap- 
ing up toward him and destruction stared him in 
the face. A hand air-pump was provided to fill 
an air balloon inside the larger one and so make 
up for the compression of the hydrogen gas 
caused by the denser, lower atmosphere. He 
started this pump, but it proved too small, and 
as the gas was compressed more and more, and 

38 



SANTOS-DUMONT AND HIS AIR-SHIP 

the flabbiness of the balloon increased, the whole 
thing became unmanageable. The great ship 
dropped and dropped through the air, while 
the aeronaut, no longer in control of his ship, but 
controlled by it, worked at the pump and threw 
out ballast in a vain endeavour to escape the 
inevitable. He was descending directly over 
the greensward in the centre of the Longchamps 
race -course, when he caught sight of some boys 
flying kites in the open space. He shouted to 
them to take hold of his trailing guide-rope and 
run with it against the wind. They understood 
at once and as instantly obeyed. The wind had 
the same effect on the air-ship as it has on a 
kite when one runs with it, and the speed of 
the fall was checked. Man and air-ship landed 
with a thud that smashed almost everything 
but the man. The smart boys that had saved 
Santos-Dumont's life helped him pack what 
was left of " Santos-Dumont No. i" into its 
basket, and a cab took inventor and invention 
back to Paris. 

In spite of the narrow escape and the dis- 
couraging ending of his first flight, Santos- 
Dumont launched his second air-ship the follow- 
ing May. Number 2 was slightly larger than 
the first, and the fault that was dangerous 
in it was corrected, its inventor thought, by a 
39 



STORIES OF INVENTORS 

ventilator connecting the inner bag with the 
outer air, which was designed to compensate 
for the contraction of the gas and keep the 
skin of the balloon taut. But No. 2 doubled 
up as had No. 1, while she was still held cap- 
tive by a line; falling into a tree hurt the 
balloon, but the aeronaut escaped unscratched. 
Santos-Dumont, in spite of his quiet ways and 
almost effeminate speech, his diminutive body, 
and wealth that permitted him to enjoy every 
luxury, persisted in his work with rare courage 
and determination. The difficulties were great 
and the available information meager to the 
last degree. The young inventor had to 
experiment and find out for himself the obstacles 
to success and then invent ways to surmount 
them. He had need of ample wealth, for the 
building of air-ships was expensive business. 
The balloons were made of the finest, lightest 
Japanese silk, carefully prepared and still more 
vigorously tested. They were made by the 
most famous of the world's balloon-makers, 
Lachambre, and required the spending of 
money unstintedly. The motors cost according 
to their lightness rather than their weight, and 
all the materials, cordage, metal-work, etc., 
were expensive for the same reason. The cost 
of the hydrogen gas was very great also, at 
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SANTOS-DUMONT AND HIS AIR-SHIP 

twenty cents per cubic meter (thirty-five cubic 
feet); and as at each ascension all the gas was 
usually lost, the expense of each sail in the air 
for gas alone amounted to from $57 for the 
smallest ship to $122 for the largest. 

Nevertheless, in November of 1899 Santos- 
Dumont launched another air-ship — No. 3. This 
one was supported by a balloon of much greater 
diameter, though the length remained about 
the same — sixty-six feet. The capacity, how- 
ever, was almost three times as great as No. 1, 
being 17,655 cubic feet. The balloon was so 
much larger that the less expensive but heavier 
illuminating gas could be used instead of hydro- 
gen. When the air-ship " Santos-Dumont No. 
3 " collapsed and dumped its navigator into the 
trees, Santos-Dumont 's friends took it upon 
themselves to stop his dangerous experiment- 
ing, but he said nothing, and straightway set 
to work to plan a new machine. It was 
characteristic of the man that to him the 
danger, the expense, and the discouragements 
counted not at all. 

In the afternoon of November 13, 1899, 
Santos-Dumont started on his first flight in 
No. 3. The wind was blowing hard, and 
for a time the great bulk of the balloon made 
little headway against it; 600 feet in air it 
41 



STORIES OF INVENTORS 

hung poised almost motionless, the winglike 
propeller whirling rapidly. Then slowly the 
great balloon began nosing its way into the 
wind, and the plucky little man, all alone, 
beyond the reach of any human voice, could 
not tell his joy, although the feeling of triumph 
was strong within him. Far below him, look- 
ing like two-legged hats, so foreshortened 
they were from the aeronaut's point of view, 
were the people of Paris, while in front loomed 
the tall steel spire of the Eiffel Tower. To sail 
round that tower even as the birds float about 
had been the dream of the young aeronaut 
since his first ascension. The motor was 
running smoothly, the balloon skin was taut, 
and everything was working well; pulling the 
rudder slightly, Santos-Dumont headed directly 
for the great steel shaft. 

The people who were on the Eiffel Tower 
that breezy afternoon saw a sight that never a 
man saw before. Out of the haze a yellow shape 
loomed larger each minute until its outlines 
could be distinctly seen. It was a big cigar- 
shaped balloon, and under it, swung by what 
seemed gossamer threads, was a basket in which 
was a man. The air-ship was going against the 
wind, and the man in the basket evidently had 
full control, for the amazed people on the 
42 



SANTOS-DUMONT AND HIS AIR-SHIP 

tower saw the air-ship turn right and left as 
her navigator pulled the rudder-cords, and she 
rose and fell as her master regulated his shifting 
ballast. For twenty minutes Santos-Dumont 
maneuvered around the tower as a sailboat 
tacks around a buoy. While the people on 
that tall spire were still watching, the aeronaut 
turned his ship around and sailed off for the 
Longchamps race-course, the green oval of 
which could be just distinguished in the distance. 

On the exact spot where, a little more than a 
year before, the same man almost lost his life 
and wrecked his first air-ship, No. 3 landed as 
softly and neatly as a bird. 

Though he made many other successful 
flights, he discovered so many improvements 
that with the first small mishap he abandoned 
No. 3 and began on No. 4. 

The balloon "Santos-Dumont No. 4" was 
long and slim, and had an inner air-bag to 
compensate for the contraction of the hydrogen 
gas. This air-ship had one feature that was 
entirely new; the aeronaut had arranged for 
himself, not a secure basket to stand in, but a 
frail, unprotected bicycle seat attached to an 
ordinary bicycle frame. The cranks were con- 
nected with the starting-gear of the motor. 

Seated on his unguarded bicycle seat, and 
43 



STORIES OF INVENTORS 

holding on to the handle-bars, to which were 
attached the rudder-cords, Santos-Dumont 
made voyages in the air with all the assurance 
of the sailor on the sea. 

But No. 4 was soon too imperfect for the 
exacting Brazilian, and in April, 1901, he 
had finished No. 5. This air-cruiser was 
the longest of all (105 feet), and was fitted 
with a sixteen horse-power motor. Instead of 
the bicycle frame, he built a triangular keel of 
pine strips and strengthened it with tightly 
strung piano wires, the whole frame, though 
sixty feet long, weighing but no pounds. 
Hung between the rods, being suspended by 
piano wires as in a spider-web, was the motor, 
basket, and propeller-shaft. 

The last-named air-ship was built, if not 
expressly at least with the intention of trying 
for the Deutsch Prize of 100,000 francs. This 
was a big undertaking, and many people thought 
it would never be accomplished; the successful 
aeronaut had to travel more than three miles 
in one direction, round the Eiffel Tower as a 
racing yacht rounds a stake-boat, and return to 
the starting point, all within thirty minutes 
— i. e., almost seven miles in two directions in 
half an hour. 

The new machine worked well, though at one 
44 



SANTOS-DUMONT AND HIS AIR-SHIP 

time the aerial navigator's friends thought that 
they would have to pick him up in pieces and 
carry him home in a basket. This incident 
occurred during one of the first flights in 
No. 5. Everything was going smoothly, and 
the air-ship circled like a hawk, when the 
spectators, who were craning their necks to see, 
noticed that something was wrong; the motor 
slowed down, the propeller spun less swiftly, 
and the whole fabric began to sink toward the 
ground. While the people gazed, their hearts 
in their mouths, they saw Santos-Dumont 
scramble out of his basket and crawl out on 
the framework, while the balloon swayed in 
the air. He calmly knotted the cord that had 
parted and crept back to his place, as uncon- 
cernedly as if he were on solid ground. 

It was in August of 1901 that he made his 
first official trial for the Deutsch Prize. The 
start was perfect, and the machine swooped 
toward the distant tower straight as a crow 
flies and almost as fast. The first half of the 
distance was covered in nine minutes, so 
twenty-one minutes remained for the balance 
of the journey: success seemed assured; the 
prize was almost within the grasp of the 
aeronaut. Of a sudden assured success was 
changed to dire peril; the automatic valves 
45 



STORIES OF INVENTORS 

began to leak, the balloon to sag, the cords 
supporting the wooden keel hung low, and before 
Santos-Dumont could stop the motor the 
propeller had cut them and the whole system 
was threatened. The wind was drifting the 
air-ship toward the Eiffel Tower; the navigator 
had lost control; 500 feet below were the 
roofs of the Trocadero Hotels; he had to decide 
which was the least dangerous; there was but 
a moment to think. Santos-Dumont, death 
staring him in the face, chose the roofs. A 
swift jerk of a cord, and a big slit was made in 
the balloon. Instantly man, motor, gas-bag, 
and keel went tumbling down straight into the 
court of the hotels. The great balloon burst 
with a noise like an explosion, and the man was 
lost in a confusion of yellow-silk covering, cords, 
and wires. When the firemen reached the place 
and put down their long ladders they found 
him standing calmly in his wicker basket, 
entirely unhurt. The long, staunch keel, resting 
by its ends on the walls of the court, prevented 
him from being dashed to pieces. And so 
ended No. 5. 

Most men would have given up aerial navi- 
gation after such an experience, but Santos- 
Dumont could not be deterred from continuing 
his experiments. The night of the very day 
46 



SANTOS-DUMONT AND HIS AIR-SHIP 

which witnessed his fearful fall and the destruc- 
tion of No. 5 he ordered a new balloon for 
" Santos-Dumont No. 6." It showed the 
pluck and determination of the man as nothing 
else could. 

Twenty-two days after the aeronaut's narrow 
escape his new air-ship was finished and ready 
for a flight. No. 6 was practically the same 
as its predecessor — the triangular keel was 
retained, but an eighteen horse-power gasoline 
motor was substituted for the sixteen horse- 
power used previously. The propeller, made 
of silk stretched over a bamboo frame, was 
hung at the after end of the keel; the motor 
was a little aft of the centre, while the basket 
to which led the steering-gear, the emergency 
valve to the balloon, and the motor-controlling 
gear was suspended farther forward. To con- 
trol the upward or downward pointing of the 
new air-ship, shifting ballast was used which 
ran along a wire under the keel from one end 
to the other; the cords controlling this ran to 
the basket also. 

The new air-ship worked well, and the experi- 
mental flights were successful with one exception 
— when the balloon came in contact with a tree. 

It was in October, 1901 (the 19th), when 
the Deutsch Prize Committee was asked to 
47 



STORIES OF INVENTORS 

meet again and see a man try to drive a 
balloon against the wind, round the Eiffel 
Tower, and return. 

The start took place at 2:42 p. m. of October 
19, 1 90 1, with a beam wind blowing. Straight 
as a bullet the air-ship sped for the steel shaft 
of the tower, rising as she flew. On and on 
she sped, while the spectators, remembering 
the finish of the last trial, watched almost 
breathlessly. With the air of a cup-racer turn- 
ing the stake-boat she rounded the steel spire, a 
run of three and three-fifth miles, in nine 
minutes (at the rate of more than twenty-two 
miles an hour), and started on the homestretch. 

For a few moments all went well, then those 
who watched were horrified to see the propeller 
slow down and nearly stop, while the wind 
carried the air-ship toward the Tower. Just 
in time the motor was speeded up and the 
course was resumed. As the group of men 
watched the speck grow larger and larger until 
things began to take definite shape, the white 
blur of the whirling propeller could be seen 
and the small figure in the basket could be at 
last distinguished. Again the motor failed, the 
speed slackened, and the ship began to sink. 
Santos-Dumont threw out enough ballast to 
recover his equilibrium and adjusted the motor. 
48 



SANTOS-DUMONT AND HIS AIR-SHIP 

With but three minutes left and some distance 
to go, the great dirigible balloon got up speed 
and rushed for the goal. At eleven and a half 
minutes past three, twenty-nine minutes and 
thirty-one seconds after starting, Santos-Dumont 
crossed the line, the winner of the Deutsch 
Prize. And so the young Brazilian accom- 
plished that which had been declared impossible. 

The following winter the aerial navigator, in 
the same No. 5, sailed many times over the 
waters of the Mediterranean from Monte 
Carlo. These flights over the water, against, 
athwart, and with the wind, some of them 
faster than the attending steamboats could 
travel, continued until through careless infla- 
tion of the balloon the air-ship and navigator 
sank into the sea. Santos-Dumont was rescued 
without being harmed in the least, and the 
air-ship was preserved intact, to be exhibited 
later to American sightseers. 

"Santos-Dumont No. 6," the most success- 
ful of the series built by the determined 
Brazilian, looks as if it were altogether too 
frail to intrust with the carrying of a human 
being. The 105 -foot -long balloon, a light 
yellow in colour, sways and undulates with 
every passing breeze. The steel piano wires 
by which the keel and apparatus are hung to 
49 



STORIES OF INVENTORS 

the balloon skin are like spider-webs in 
lightness and delicacy, and the motor that has 
the strength of eighteen horses is hardly- 
bigger than a barrel. A little forward of 
the motor is suspended to the keel the cigar- 
shaped gasoline reservoir, and strung along the 
top rod are the batteries which furnish the 
current to make the sparks for the purpose of 
exploding the gas in the motor. 

Santos-Dumont himself says that the world 
is still a long way from practical, everyday 
aerial navigation, but he points out the apparent 
fact that the dirigible balloon in the hands of 
determined men will practically put a stop to 
war. Henri Rochefort has said: "The day 
when it is established that a man can direct an 
air-ship in a given direction and cause it to 
maneuver as he wills — there will remain little 
for the nations to do but to lay down their 
arms." 

The man who has done so much toward the 
abolishing of war can rest well content with 
his work. 



5° 



HOW A FAST TRAIN IS RUN 



HOW A FAST TRAIN IS RUN 

/ T*HE conductor stood at the end of the train, 
■*■ watch in hand, and at the moment 
when the hands indicated the appointed hour 
he leisurely climbed aboard and pulled the 
whistle cord. A sharp, penetrating hiss of 
escaping air answered the pull, and the train 
moved out of the great train-shed in its race 
against time. It was all so easy and comfortable 
that the passengers never thought of the work 
and study that had been spent to produce the 
result. The train gathered speed and rushed 
on at an appalling rate, but the passengers did 
not realise how fast they were going unless they 
looked out of the windows and saw the houses 
and trees, telegraph poles, and signal towers 
flash by. 

It is the purpose of this chapter to tell how 
high speed is attained without loss of comfort 
to the passengers — in other words, to tell how 
a fast train is run. 

When the conductor pulled the cord at the 
rear end of the long train a whistling signal was 
53 



STORIES OF INVENTORS 

thus given in the engine-cab, and the engineer, 
after glancing down the tracks to see that the 
signals indicated a clear track, pulled out the 
long handle of the throttle, and the great machine 
obeyed his will as a docile horse answers a touch 
on the rein. He opened the throttle-valve just a 
little, so that but little steam was admitted to 
the cylinders, and the pistons being pushed out 
slowly, the driving-wheels revolved slowly and 
the train started gradually. When the end of 
the piston stroke was reached the used steam 
was expelled into the smokestack, creating a 
draught which in turn strengthened the heat of 
the fire. With each revolution of the driving- 
wheels, each cylinder — there is one on each side 
of every locomotive — blew its steamy breath 
into the stack twice. This kept the fire glow- 
ing and made the chou-chou sound that every- 
body knows and every baby imitates. 

As the train gathered speed the engineer 
pulled the throttle open wider and wider, the 
puffs in the short, stubby stack grew more and 
more frequent, and the rattle and roar of the 
iron horse increased. 

Down in the pit of the engine-cab the fireman, 

a great shovel in his hands, stood ready to feed 

the ravenous fires. Every minute or two he 

pulled the chain and yanked the furnace door 

54 




"FIRING ' A FAST LOCOMOTIVE 
An operation that is practically continuous during a fast trip. 



HOW A FAST TRAIN IS RUN 

open to throw in the coal, shutting the door 
again after each shovelful, to keep the fire hot. 

The fireman on a fast locomotive is kept 
extremely busy, for he must keep the steam- 
pressure up to the required standard — 150 or 
200 pounds — no matter how fast the sucking 
cylinders may draw it out. He kept his eyes 
on the steam-gage most of the time, and the 
minute the quivering finger began to drop, 
showing reduced pressure, he opened the door 
to the glowing furnace and fed the fire. The 
steam-cylinders act on the boiler a good deal 
as a lung-tester acts on a human being; the 
cylinders draw out the steam from the boiler, 
requiring a roaring fire to make the vapour 
rapidly enough and keep up the pressure. 

Though the engineer seemed to be taking it 
easily enough with his hand resting lightly on the 
reversing-lever, his body at rest, the fireman 
was kept on the jump. If he was not shovelling 
coal he was looking ahead for signals (for many 
roads require him to verify the engineer), or 
adjusting the valves that admitted steam to 
the train-pipes and heated the cars, or else, 
noticing that the water in the boiler was getting 
low — and this is one of his greatest responsi- 
bilities, which, however, the engineer sometimes 
shares — he turned on the steam in the injector, 
55 



STORIES OF INVENTORS 

which forced the water against the pressure 
into the boiler. All these things he has to 
do repeatedly even on a short run. 

The engineer — or "runner," as he is called by 
his fellows — has much to do also, and has infi- 
nitely greater responsibility. On him depends 
the safety and the comfort of the passengers 
to a large degree; he must nurse his engine to 
produce the greatest speed at the least cost of 
coal, and he must round the curves, climb the 
grades, and make the slow-downs and stops 
so gradually that the passengers will not be 
disturbed. 

To the outsider who rides in a locomotive- 
cab for the first time it seems as if the engineer 
settles down to his real work with a sigh of relief 
when the limits of the city have been passed; 
for in the towns there are many signals to be 
watched, many crossings to be looked out for, 
and a multitude of moving trains, snorting 
engines, and tooting whistles to distract one's 
attention. The "runner, " however, seemed not 
to mind it at all. He pulled on his cap a little 
more firmly, and, after glancing at his watch, 
reached out for the throttle handle. A very 
little pull satisfied him, and though the increase 
in speed was hardly perceptible, the more rapid 
exhaust told the story of faster movement. 
56 



HOW A FAST TRAIN IS RUN 

As the train sped on, the engineer moved the 
reversing-lever notch by notch nearer the centre 
of the guide. This adjusted the "link-motion" 
mechanism, which is operated by the driving- 
axle, and cut off the steam entering the cylin- 
ders in such a way that it expanded more 
fully and economically, thus saving fuel without 
loss of power. 

When a station was reached, when a " caution" 
signal was displayed, or whenever any one of 
the hundred or more things occurred that might 
require a stop or a slow-down, the engineer 
closed down the throttle and very gradually 
opened the air-brake valve that admitted com- 
pressed air to the brake -cylinders, not only on 
the locomotive but on all the cars. The speed 
of the train slackened steadily but without jar, 
until the power of the compressed air clamped 
the brake-shoes on the wheels so tightly that 
they were practically locked and the train was 
stopped. By means of the air-brake the engi- 
neer had almost entire control of the train. 
The pump that compresses the air is on the 
engine, and keeps the pressure in the car and 
locomotive reservoirs automatically up to the 
required standard. 

Each stage of every trip of a train not a 
freight is carefully charted, and the engineer is 
57 



STORIES OF INVENTORS 

provided with a time-table that shows where his 
train should be at a given time. It is a matter 
of pride with the engineers of fast trains to keep 
close to their schedules, and their good records 
depend largely on this running-time, but delays 
of various kinds creep in, and in spite of their best 
efforts engineers are not always able to make 
all their schedules. To arrive at their desti- 
nations on time, therefore, certain sections must 
be covered in better than schedule time, and 
then great skill is required to get the speed 
without a sacrifice of comfort for the passenger. 
To most travellers time is more valuable than 
money, and so everything about a train is 
planned to facilitate rapid travelling. Almost 
every part of a locomotive is controlled from the 
cab, which prevents unnecessary stopping to cor- 
rect defects; from his seat the engineer can let 
the condensed water out of the cylinders; he 
can start a jet of steam in the stack and create 
a draft through the fire-box; by the pressure 
of a lever he is able to pour sand on a slippery 
track, or by the manipulation of another lever 
a snow-scraper is let down from the cowcatcher. 
The practised ear of a locomotive engineer often 
enables him to discover defects in the working 
of his powerful machine, and he is generally able, 
with the aid of various devices always on 

58 



HOW A FAST TRAIN IS RUN 

hand, to prevent an increase of trouble without 
leaving the cab. 

As explained above, a fast run means the 
use of a great deal of steam and therefore water ; 
indeed, the higher the speed the greater con- 
sumption of water. Often the schedules do 
not allow time enough to stop for water, and 
the consumption is so great that it is impossible 
to carry enough to keep the engine going to the 
end of the run. There are provided, therefore, 
at various places along the line, tanks eighteen 
inches to two feet wide, six inches deep, and a 
quarter of a mile long. These are filled with 
water and serve as long, narrow reservoirs, from 
which the locomotive-tenders are filled while 
going at almost full speed. Curved pipes are 
let down into the track-tank as the train 
speeds on, and scoop up the water so fast that 
the great reservoirs are very quickly filled. 
This operation, too, is controlled from the 
engine-cab, and it is one of the fireman's 
duties to let down the pipe when the water- 
signal alongside the track appears. The locomo- 
tive, when taking water from a track-tank, 
looks as if it was going through a river: the 
water is dashed into spray and flies out on either 
side like the waves before a fast boat. Train- 
men tell the story of a tramp who stole a ride 
59 



STORIES OF INVENTORS 

on the front or "dead" end platform of the bag- 
gage car of a fast train. This car was coupled 
to the rear end of the engine-tender ; it was quite 
a long run, without stops, and the engine took 
water from a track-tank on the way. When 
the train stopped, the tramp was discovered 
prone on the platform of the baggage car, half- 
drowned from the water thrown back when 
the engine took its drink on the run. 

"Here, get off!" growled the brakeman. 
"What are you doing there?" 

"All right, boss," sputtered the tramp. 
"Say," he asked after a moment, "what was 
that river we went through a while ago?" 

Though the engineer's work is not hard, the 
strain is great, and fast runs are divided up 
into sections so that no one engine or its 
runner has to work more than three or four 
hours at a time. 

It is realised that in order to keep the train- 
men — and especially the engineers — alert and 
keenly alive to their work and responsibilities, 
it is necessary to make the periods of labour 
short; the same thing is found to apply to the 
machines also — they need rest to keep them 
perfectly fit. 

Before the engineer can run his train, the way 
must be cleared for him, and when the train 
60 




TRACK TANK 




RAILROAD SEMAPHORE SIGNALS 



HOW A FAST TRAIN IS RUN 

starts out it becomes part of a vast system. 
Each part of this intricate system is affected by 
every other part, so each train must run accord- 
ing to schedule or disarrange the entire plan. 

Each train has its right-of-way over certain 
other trains, and the fastest train has the right- 
of-way over all others. If, for any reason, the 
fastest train is late, all others that might be in 
the way must wait till "the flyer has passed. 
When anything of this sort occurs the whole 
plan has to be changed, and all trains have 
to be run on a new schedule that must be made 
up on the moment. 

The ideal train schedules, or those by which 
the systems are regularly governed, are charted 
out beforehand on a ruled sheet, as a ship's 
course is charted on a voyage, in the main office 
of the railroad. Each engineer and conductor 
is provided with a printed copy in the form of a 
table giving the time of departure and arrival 
at the different points. When the trains run 
on time it is all very simple, and the work of 
the despatcher, the man who keeps track of the 
trains, is easy. When, however, the system 
is disarranged by the failure of a train to 
keep to its schedule, the despatcher 's work 
becomes most difficult. From long training 
the despatchers become perfectly familiar with 
61 



STORIES OF INVENTORS 

every detail of the sections of road under their 
control, the position of every switch, each 
station, all curves, bridges, grades, and crossings. 
When a train is delayed and the system 
spoiled, it is the despatcher's duty to make up 
another one on the spot, and arrange by tele- 
grams, which are repeated for fear of mistakes, 
for the holding of this train and the movement 
of others until the tangle is straightened out. 
This problem is particularly difficult when a 
road has but one track and trains moving in 
both directions have to run on the same pair 
of rails. It is on roads of this sort that 
most of the accidents occur. Almost if not 
quite all depends on the clear-headedness and 
quick-witted grasp of the despatchers and 
strict obedience to orders by the trainmen. 
To remove as much chance of error as possible, 
safety signalling methods have been devised to 
warn the engineer of danger ahead. Many 
modern railroads are divided into short sections 
or "blocks, " each of which is presided over by a 
signal-tower. At the beginning of each block 
stand poles with projecting arms that are con- 
nected with the signal-tower by wires running 
over pulleys. There are generally two to each 
track in each block, and when both are slant- 
ing downward the engineer of the approaching 
62 



HOW A FAST TRAIN IS RUN 

locomotive knows that the block he is about 
to enter is clear and also that the rails of the 
section before that is clear as well. The lower 
arm, or "semaphore," stands for the second 
block, and if it is horizontal the engineer knows 
that he must proceed cautiously because the 
second section already has a train in it; if the 
upper arm is straight the "runner" knows that 
a train or obstruction ^f some sort makes it 
unsafe to enter the first block, and if he obeys 
the strict rules he must stay where he is until 
the arm is lowered At night, red, white, and 
green lights serve instead of the arms: 
white, safety; green, caution; and red, danger. 
Accidents have sometimes occurred because 
the engineers were colour-blind and red and green 
looked alike to them. Most roads nowadays 
test all their engineers for this defect in vision. 
In spite of all precautions, it sometimes 
happens that the block-signals are not set 
properly, and to avoid danger of rear-end colli- 
sions, conductors and brakemen are instructed 
(when, for any reason, their train stops where 
it is not so scheduled) to go back with lanterns 
at night, or flags by day, and be ready to warn 
any following train. If for any reason a train 
is delayed and has to move ahead slowly, 
torpedoes are placed on the track which are 
63 



STORIES OF INVENTORS 

exploded by the engine that comes after and 
warn its engineer to proceed cautiously. 

All these things the engineer must bear in 
mind, and beside his jockey-like handling of his 
iron horse, he must watch for signals that flash 
by in an instant when he is going at full speed, 
and at the same time keep a sharp lookout 
ahead for obstructions on the track and for 
damaged roadbed. 

The conductor has nothing to do with the 
mechanical running of the train, though he 
receives the orders and is, in a general way, 
responsible. The passengers are his special 
care, and it is his business to see that their 
getting on and off is in accordance with their 
tickets. He is responsible for their comfort 
also, and must be an animated information 
bureau, loaded with facts about every conceiv- 
able thing connected with travel. The brake- 
men are his assistants, and stay with him to the 
end of the division; the engineer and fireman, 
with their engine, are cut off at the end of 
their division also. 

The fastest train of a road is the pride of all 
its employees ; all the trainmen aspire to a place 
on the flyer. It never starts out on any run 
without the good wishes of the entire force, and 
it seldom puffs out of the train-shed and over 
64 



HOW A FAST TRAIN IS RUN 

the maze of rails in the yard without receiving 
the homage of those who happen to be within 
sight. It is impossible to tell of all the things 
that enter into the running of a fast train, but 
as it flashes across States, intersects cities, 
thunders past humble stations, and whistles 
imperiously at crossings, it attracts the atten- 
tion of all. It is the spectacular thing that 
makes fame for the road, appears in large type 
in the newspapers, and makes havoc with the 
time-tables, while the steady-going passenger 
trains and labouring freights do the work and 
make the money. 



6S 



HOW AUTOMOBILES WORK 



HOW AUTOMOBILES WORK 

EVERY boy and almost every man has 
longed to ride on a locomotive, and has 
dreamed of holding the -throttle-lever and of 
feeling the great machine move under him 
in answer to his will. Many of us have pro- 
tested vigorously that we wanted to become 
grimy, hard-working firemen for the sake of 
having to do with the "iron horse." 

It is this joy of control that comes to the 
driver of an automobile which is one of the 
motor-car's chief attractions: it is the longing 
of the boy to run a locomotive reproduced in 
the grown-up. 

The ponderous, snorting, thundering loco- 
motive, towering high above its steel road, seems 
far removed from the swift, crouching, almost 
noiseless motor-car, and yet the relationship 
is very close. In fact, the automobile, which 
is but a locomotive that runs at will anywhere, 
is the father of the greater machine. 

About the beginning of 1800, self-propelled 
vehicles steamed along the roads of Old England, 

69 



STORIES OF INVENTORS 

carrying passengers safely, if not swiftly, and, 
strange to say, continued to run more or less 
successfully until prohibited by law from 
using the highways, because of their inter- 
ference with the horse traffic. Therefore the 
locomotive and the railroads throve at the 
expense of the automobile, and the perma- 
nent iron-bound right of way of the railroads 
left the highways to the horse. 

The old-time automobiles were cumbrous 
affairs, with clumsy boilers, and steam-engines 
that required one man's entire attention to 
keep them going. The concentrated fuels 
were not known in those days, and heat- 
economising appliances were not invented. 

It was the invention by Gottlieb Daimler 
of the high-speed gasoline engine, in 1885, that 
really gave an impetus to the building of 
efficient automobiles of all powers. The success 
of his explosive gasoline engine, forerunner 
of all succeeding gasoline motor-car engines, 
was the incentive to inventors to perfect the 
steam-engine for use on self-propelled vehicles. 

Unlike a locomotive, the automobile must 
be light, must be able to carry power or fuel 
enough to drive it a long distance, and yet must 
be almost automatic in its workings. All of 
these things the modern motor car accom- 
70 



HOW AUTOMOBILES WORK 

plishes, but the struggle to make the machinery 
more efficient still continues. 

The three kinds of power used to run auto- 
mobiles are steam, electricity, and gasoline, 
taken in the order of application. The steam- 
engines in motor-cars are not very different 
from the engines used to run locomotives, 
factory machinery, or street-rollers, but they 
are much lighter and, of course, smaller— very 
much smaller in proportion to the power they 
produce. It will be seen how compact and 
efficient these little steam plants are when 
a ten-horse-power engine, boiler, water-tank, 
and gasoline reservoir holding enough to drive 
the machine one hundred miles, are stored in a 
carriage with a wheel-base of less than seven 
feet and a width of five feet, and still leave 
ample room for four passengers. 

It is the use of gasoline for fuel that makes 
all this possible. Gasoline, being a very volatile 
liquid, turns into a highly inflammable gas 
when heated and mixed with the oxygen in 
the air. A tank holding from twenty to forty 
gallons of gasoline is connected, through an 
automatic regulator which controls the flow of 
oil, to a burner under the boiler. The burner 
allows the oil, which turns into gas on coming in 
contact with its hot surface, to escape through a 
7i 



STORIES OF INVENTORS 

multitude of small openings and mix with the 
air, which is supplied from beneath. The 
openings are so many and so close together 
that the whole surface is practically one solid 
sheet of very hot blue flame. In getting up 
steam a separate blaze or flame of alcohol or 
gasoline is made, which heats the steel or iron 
with which the fuel-oil comes in contact until 
it is sufficiently hot to turn the oil to gas, 
after which the burner works automatically. 
A hand air-pump or one automatically operated 
by the engine maintains sufficient air pressure 
in the fuel-tank to keep a constant flow. 

Most steam automobile boilers are of the 
water-tube variety — that is, water to be turned 
into steam is carried through the flames in 
pipes, instead of the heat in pipes through the 
water, as in the ordinary flue boilers. Com- 
pactness, quick-heating, and strength are the 
characteristics of motor-car boilers. Some of 
the boilers are less than twenty inches high 
and of the same diameter, and yet are capable 
of generating seven and one-half horse-power 
at a high steam pressure (150 to 200 pounds). 
In these boilers the heat is made to play directly 
on a great many tubes, and a full head of steam 
is generated in a few minutes. As the steam 
pressure increases, a regulator that shuts off 
72 




.5 <u 



HOW AUTOMOBILES WORK 

the supply of gasoline is operated automatically, 
and so the pressure is maintained. 

The water from which the steam is made is 
also fed automatically into the boiler, when 
the engine is in motion, by a pump worked 
by the engine piston. A hand-pump is also 
supplied by which the driver can keep the proper 
amount when the machine is still or in case of 
a breakdown. A water-gauge in plain sight 
keeps the driver informed at all times as to 
the amount of water in the boiler. From the 
boiler the steam goes through the throttle-valve 
— the handle of which is by the driver's side 
— direct to the engine, and there expands, 
pushes the piston up and down, and by means 
of a crank on the axle does its work. 

The engines of modern automobiles are mar- 
vels of compactness — so compact, indeed, that 
a seven-horse-power engine occupies much less 
space than an ordinary barrel. The steam, after 
being used, is admitted to a coil of pipes 
cooled by the breeze caused by the motion of 
the vehicle, and so condensed into water and 
returned to the tank. The engine is started, 
stopped, slowed, and sped by the cutting off 
or admission of the steam through the throttle- 
valve. It is reversed by means of the same 
mechanism used on locomotives — the link- 

n 



STORIES OF INVENTORS 

motion and reversing-lever, by which the 
direction of the steam is reversed and the 
engine made to run the other way. 

After doing its work the steam is made to 
circulate round the cylinder (or cylinders, if 
there are more than one), keeping it extra hot 
— "superheated"; and thereafter it is made to 
perform a like duty to the boiler-feed water, 
before it is allowed to escape. 

All steam-propelled automobiles, from the 
light steam runabout to the clumsy steam 
roller, are worked practically as described. 
Some machines are worked by compound 
engines, which simply use the power of expan- 
sion still left in the steam in a second larger 
cylinder after it has worked the first, in which 
case every ounce of power is extracted from 
the vapour. 

The automobile builders have a problem 
that troubles locomotive builders very little — 
that is, compensating the difference between 
the speeds of the two driving-wheels when 
turning corners. Just as the inside man of a 
military company takes short steps when 
turning and the outside man takes long ones, 
so the inside wheel of a vehicle turns slowly 
while the outside wheel revolves quickly when 
rounding a corner. As most automobiles are 
74 



HOW AUTOMOBILES WORK 

propelled by power applied to the rear axle, 
to which the wheels are fixed, it is manifest 
that unless some device were made to correct 
the fault one wheel would have to slide while 
the other revolved. This difficulty hag been 
overcome by cutting the axle in two and placing 
between the ends a series of gears which permit 
the two wheels to revolve at different speeds 
and also apply the power to both alike. This 
device is called a compensating gear, and is 
worked out in various ways by the different 
builders. 

The locomotive builder accomplishes the 
same thing by making his wheels larger on 
the outside, so that in turning the wide curves 
of the railroad the whole machine slides to the 
inside, bringing to bear the large diameter 
of the outer wheel and the small diameter of 
the inner, the wheels being fixed to a solid 
axle. 

The steam machine can always be dis- 
tinguished by the thin stream of white vapour 
that escapes from the rear or underneath while 
it is in motion and also, as a rule, when it is 
at rest. 

The motor of a steam vehicle always stops 
when the machine is not moving, which is 
another distinguishing feature, as the gasoline 
75 



STORIES OF INVENTORS 

motors run continually, or at least unless the 
car is left standing for a long time. 

As the owners of different makes of bicycles 
formerly wrangled over the merits of their 
respective machines, so now motor-car owners 
discuss the value of the different powers — 
steam, gasoline, and electricity. 

Though steam was the propelling force of 
the earliest automobiles, and the power best 
understood, it was the perfection of the gasoline 
motor that revived the interest in self-propelled 
vehicles and set the inventors to work. 

A gasoline motor is somewhat like a gun — 
the explosion of the gas in the motor-cylinder 
pushes the piston (which may be likened to the 
projectile), and the power thus generated turns 
a crank and drives the wheels. 

The gasoline motor is the lightest power- 
generator that has yet been discovered, and 
it is this characteristic that makes it particu- 
larly valuable to propel automobiles. Santos- 
Dumont's success in aerial navigation is due 
largely to the gasoline motor, which generated 
great power in proportion to its weight. 

A gasoline motor works by a series of 
explosions, which make the noise that is now 
heard on every hand. From the gasoline 
tank, which is always of sufficient capacity for 

7 6 



HOW AUTOMOBILES WORK 

a good long run, a pipe is connected with a 
device called the carbureter. This is really 
a gas machine, for it turns the liquid oil into 
gas, this being done by turning it into fine 
spray and mixing it with pure air. The gaso- 
line vapour thus formed is highly inflammable, 
and if lighted in a closed space will explode. 
It is the explosive power that is made to do the 
work, and it is a series of small gun-fires that 
make the gasoline motor-car go. 

All this sounds simple enough, but a great 
many things must be considered that make 
the construction of a successful working motor 
a difficult problem. 

In the first place, the carbureter, which 
turns the oil into gas, must work automatically, 
the proper amount of oil being fed into the 
machine and the exact proportion of air 
admitted for the successful mixture. Then 
the gas must be admitted to the cylinders 
in just the right quantity for the work to be 
done. This is usually regulated automatically, 
and can also be controlled directly by the 
driver. Since the explosion of gas in the 
cylinder drives the piston out only, and not, 
as in the case of the steam-engine, back and 
forward, some provision must be made to 
complete the cycle, to bring back the piston, 

77 



STORIES OF INVENTORS 

exhaust the burned gas, and refill the cylinder 
with a new charge. 

In the steam-engine the piston is forced back- 
ward and forward by the expansive power of the 
steam, the vapour being admitted alternately 
to the forward and rear ends of the cylinder. 
The piston of the gasoline engine, however, 
working by the force of exploded gas, produces 
power when moving in one direction only — 
the piston-head is pushed out by the force of 
the explosion, just as the plunger of a bicycle 
pump is sometimes forced out by the pressure of 
air behind it. The piston is connected with 
the engine-crank and revolves the shaft, which 
is in turn connected with the driving-wheels. 
The movement of the piston in the cylinder 
performs four functions: first, the downward 
stroke, the result of the explosion of gas, pro- 
duces the power; second, the returning 
up-stroke pushes out the burned gas; third, 
the next down-stroke sucks in a fresh supply 
of gas, which (fourth) is compressed by the 
following-up movement and is ready for the 
next explosion. This is called a two-cycle 
motor, because two complete revolutions are 
necessary to accomplish all the operations. 
Many machines are fitted with heavy fly- 
wheels, the swift revolution of which carries 

7 8 




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a) 3 



H ^ a 



HOW AUTOMOBILES WORK 

the impetus of the power stroke through the 
other three operations. 

To keep a practically continuous forward 
movement on the driving-shaft, many motors 
are made with four cylinders, the piston of 
each being connected with the crank-shaft at 
a different angle, and each cylinder doing a 
different part of the work; for example, while 
No. i cylinder is doing the work from the force 
of the explosion, No. 2 is compressing, No. 3 is 
getting a fresh supply of gas, and No. 4 is 
cleaning out waste gas. A four-cylinder motor 
is practically putting forth power continuously, 
since one of the four pistons is always at work. 

While this takes long to describe, the motion 
is faster than the eye can follow, and the "phut, 
phut" noise of the exhaust sounds like the 
tattoo of a drum. Almost every gasoline motor 
vehicle carries its own electric plant, either a 
set of batteries or more commonly a little 
magneto dynamo, which is run by the shaft 
of the motor. Electricity is used to make the 
spark that explodes the gas at just the right 
moment in the cylinders. All this is automatic, 
though sometimes the driver has to resort to 
the persuasive qualities of a monkey-wrench 
and an oil-can. 

The exploding gas creates great heat, and 
79 



STORIES OF INVENTORS 

unless something is done to cool the cylinders 
they get so hot that the gas is ignited by the 
heat of the metal. Some motors are cooled 
by a stream of water which, flowing round the 
cylinders and through coils of pipe, is blown 
upon by the breeze made by the movement of 
the vehicle. Others are kept cool by a revolving 
fan geared to the driving-shaft, which blows on 
the cylinders; while still others — small motors 
used on motor bicycles, generally — have wide 
ridges or projections on the outside of the 
cylinders to catch the wind as the machine 
rushes along. 

The inventors of the gasoline motor vehicles 
had many difficulties to overcome that did not 
trouble those who had to deal with steam. 
For instance, the gasoline motor cannot be 
started as easily as a steam-engine. It is 
necessary to make the driving-shaft revolve 
a few times by hand in order to start the 
cylinders working in their proper order. There- 
fore, the motor of a gasoline machine goes 
all the time, even when the vehicle is at rest. 
Friction clutches are used by which the driving- 
shaft and the axles can be connected or dis- 
connected at the will of the driver, so that the 
vehicle can stand while the motor is running; 
friction clutches are used also to throw in 
80 



HOW AUTOMOBILES WORK 

gears of different sizes to increase or decrease 
the speed of the vehicle, as well as to drive 
backward. 

The early gasoline automobiles sounded, 
when moving, like an artillery company com- 
ing full tilt down a badly paved street. The 
exhausted gas coughed resoundingly, the gears 
groaned and shrieked loudly when improperly 
lubricated, and the whole machine rattled 
like a runaway tin-peddler. Ingenious mufflers 
have subdued the sputtering exhaust, the gears 
are made to run in oil or are so carefully cut 
as to mesh perfectly, rubber tires deaden the 
pounding of the wheels, and carefully designed 
frames take up the jar. 

Steam and gasoline vehicles can be used to 
travel long distances from the cities, for water 
can be had and gasoline bought almost any- 
where; but electric automobiles, driven by the 
third of the three powers used for self-propelled 
vehicles, must keep within easy reach of the 
charging stations. 

Just as the perfection of the gasoline motor 
spurred on the inventors to adapt the steam- 
engine for use in automobiles, so the inventors 
of the storage battery, which is the heart of an 
electric carriage, were stirred up to make electric 
propulsion practical. 

81 



STORIES OF INVENTORS 

The storage battery of an electric vehicle 
is practically a tank that holds electricity; 
the electrical energy of the dynamo is trans- 
formed into chemical energy in the batteries, 
which in turn is changed into electrical energy 
again and used to run the motors. 

Electric automobiles are the most simple of 
all the self-propelled vehicles. The current 
stored in the batteries is simply turned off and 
on the motors, or the pressure reduced by means 
of resistance which obstructs the flow, and there- 
fore the power, of the current. To reverse, 
it is only necessary to change the direction 
of the current's flow; and in order to stop, 
the connection between motor and battery is 
broken by a switch. 

Electricity is the ideal power for automobiles. 
Being clean and easily controlled, it seems just 
the thing; but it is expensive, and sometimes 
hard to get. No satisfactory substitute has 
been found for it, however, in the larger cities, 
and it may be that creative or " primary" 
batteries both cheap and effective will be 
invented and will do away with the one objection 
to electricity for automobiles. 

The astonishing things of to-day are the 
commonplaces of to-morrow, and so the 
achievements of automobile builders as here 
82 



HOW AUTOMOBILES WORK 

set down may be greatly surpassed by the time 
this appears in print. 

The sensations of the locomotive engineer, 
who feels his great machine strain forward over 
the smooth steel rails, are as nothing to the 
almost numbing sensations of the automobile 
driver who covered space at the rate of eighty- 
eight miles an hour on the road between Paris 
and Madrid: he felt every inequality in the 
road, every grade along the way, and each 
curve, each shadow, was a menace that 
required the greatest nerve and skill. Loco- 
motive driving at a hundred miles an hour 
is but mild exhilaration as compared to the 
feelings of the motor-car driver who travels at 
fifty miles an hour on the public highway. 

Gigantic motor trucks carrying tons of 
freight twist in and out through crowded 
streets, controlled by one man more easily than 
a driver guides a spirited horse on a country 
road. 

Frail motor bicycles dash round the platter- 
like curves of cycle tracks at railroad speed, 
and climb hills while the riders sit at ease with 
feet on coasters. 

An electric motor-car wends the streets of 
New York every day with thirty-five or forty 
sightseers on its broad back, while a groom in 

83 



STORIES OF INVENTORS 

whipcord blows an incongruous coaching-horn 
in the rear. 

Motor plows, motor ambulances, motor 
stages, delivery wagons, street-cars without 
tracks, pleasure vehicles, and even baby car- 
riages, are to be seen everywhere. 

In 1845, motor vehicles were forbidden the 
streets for the sake of the horses; in 1903, the 
horses are being crowded off by the motor-cars. 
The motor is the more economical — it is the 
survival of the fittest. 



84 



THE FASTEST STEAMBOATS 



THE FASTEST STEAMBOATS 

TN 1807, the first practical steamboat puffed 
■*■ slowly up the Hudson, while the people 
ranged along the banks " gazed in wonder. 
Even the grim walls of the Palisades must have 
been surprised at the strange intruder. Robert 
Fulton's Clermont was the forerunner of the 
fleets upon fleets of power-driven craft that 
have stemmed the currents of a thousand 
streams and parted the waves of many seas. 

The Clermont took several days to go from 
New York to Albany, and the trip was the 
wonder of that time. 

During the summer of 1902 a long, slim, 
white craft, with a single brass smokestack 
and a low deck-house, went gliding up the 
Hudson with a kind of crouching motion 
that suggested a cat ready to spring. On her 
deck several men were standing behind the 
pilot-house with stop-watches in their hands. 
The little craft seemed alive under their feet 
and quivered with eagerness to be off. The 
passenger boats going in the same direction 



STORIES OF INVENTORS 

were passed in a twinkling, and the tugs and 
sailing vessels seemed to dwindle as houses 
and trees seem to shrink when viewed from 
the rear platform of a fast train. 

Two posts, painted white and in line with 
each other — one almost at the river's edge, the 
other 150 feet back — marked the starting-line 
of a measured mile, and were eagerly watched 
by the men aboard the yacht. She sped 
toward the starting-line as a sprinter dashes 
for the tape; almost instantly the two posts 
were in line, the men with watches cried "Time ! " 
and the race was on. Then began such a 
struggle with Father Time as was never before 
seen; the wind roared in the ears of the pas- 
sengers and snatched their words away almost 
before their lips had formed them ; the water, 
a foam-flecked streak, dashed away from the 
gleaming white sides as if in terror. As the 
wonderful craft sped on she seemed to settle 
down to her work as a good horse finds himself 
and gets into his stride. Faster and faster 
she went, while the speed of her going swept off 
the black flume of smoke from her stack and 
trailed it behind, a dense, low-lying shadow. 

"Look!" shouted one of the men into 
another's ear, and raised his arm to point. 
"We're beating the train!" 
88 



THE FASTEST STEAMBOATS 

Sure enough, a passenger train running along 
the river's edge, the wheels spinning round, the 
locomotive throwing out clouds of smoke, was 
dropping behind. The train was being beaten 
by the boat. Quivering, throbbing with the 
tremendous effort, she dashed on, the water 
climbing her sides and lashing to spume 
at her stern. 

"Time!" shouted several together, as the 
second pair of posts came in line, marking the 
finish of the mile. The word was passed to 
the frantically struggling firemen and engineers 
below, while those on deck compared watches. 

"One minute and thirty-two seconds," said 
one. 

"Right," answered the others. 

Then, as the wonderful yacht Arrow gradually 
slowed down, they tried to realise the speed 
and to accustom themselves to the fact that 
they had made the fastest mile on record on 
water. 

And so the Arrow, moving at the rate of forty- 
six miles an hour, followed the course of her 
ancestress, the Clermont, when she made her 
first long trip almost a hundred years before.. 

The Clermont was the first practical steam- 
boat, and the Arrow the fastest, and so both 
were record-breakers. While there are not 

8 9 



STORIES OF INVENTORS 

many points of resemblance between the first 
and the fastest boat, one is clearly the out- 
growth of the other, but so vastly improved 
is the modern craft that it is hard to even trace 
its ancestry. The little Arrow is a screw-driven 
vessel, and her reciprocating engines — that is, 
engines operated by the pulling and pushing 
power of the steam-driven pistons in cylinders 
— developed the power of 4,000 horses, equal 
to 32,000 men, when making her record- 
breaking run. All this enormous power was 
used to produce speed, there being practically 
no room left in the little 130-foot hull for 
anything but engines and boilers. 

There is little difference, except in detail, 
between the Arrow's machinery and an ordinary 
propeller tugboat. Her hull is very light for 
its strength, and it was so built as to slip easily 
through the water. She has twin engines, each 
operating its own shaft and propeller. These 
are quadruple expansion. The steam, instead 
of being allowed to escape after doing its work 
in the first cylinder, is turned into a larger one 
and then successively into two more, so that all 
of its expansive power is used. After passing 
through the four cylinders, the steam is con- 
densed into water again by turning it into pipes 
around which circulates the cool water in which 
90 



THE FASTEST STEAMBOATS 

the vessel floats. The steam thus condensed 
to water is heated and pumped into the boiler, 
to be turned into steam, so the water has to 
do its work many times. All this saves weight 
and, therefore, power, for the lighter a vessel 
is the more easily she can be driven. The 
boilers save weight also by producing steam at 
the enormous pressure of 400 pounds to the 
square inch. Steadily maintained pressure 
means power; the greater the pressure the more 
the power. It was the inventive skill of 
Charles D. Mosher, who has built many fast 
yachts, that enabled him to build engines and 
boilers of great power in proportion to their 
weight. It was the ability of the inventor 
to build boilers and engines of 4,000 horse- 
power compact and light enough to be carried 
in a vessel 130 feet long, of 12 feet 6 inches 
breadth, and 3 feet 6 inches depth, that made 
it possible for the Arrow to go a mile in one 
minute and thirty-two seconds. The speed 
of the wonderful little American boat, however, 
was not the result of any new invention, but 
was due to the perfection of old methods. 

In England, about five years before the 

Arrow's achievement, a little torpedo-boat, 

scarcely bigger than a launch, set the whole 

world talking by travelling at the rate of thirty- 

91 



STORIES OF INVENTORS 

nine and three-fourths miles an hour. The little 
craft seemed to disappear in the white smother 
of her wake, and those who watched the speed 
trial marvelled at the railroad speed she made. 
The Turbina — for that was the little record- 
breaker's name — was propelled by a new kind 
of engine, and her speed was all the more 
remarkable on that account. C. A. Parsons, the 
inventor of the engine, worked out the idea that 
inventors have been studying for a long time — 
since 1629, in fact — that is, the rotary principle, 
or the rolling movement without the up-and- 
down driving mechanism of the piston. 

The Turbina was driven by a number of 
steam-turbines that worked a good deal like 
the water-turbines that use the power of 
Niagara. Just as a water-wheel is driven by 
the weight or force of the water striking the 
blades or paddles of the wheel, so the force of 
the many jets of steam striking against the 
little wings makes the wheels of the steam- 
turbines revolve. If you take a card that has 
been cut to a circular shape and cut the edges 
so that little wings will be made, then blow 
on this winged edge, the card will revolve with 
a buzz; the Parsons steam-turbine works in 
the same way. A shaft bearing a number of 
steel disks or wheels, each having many wings 
92 



THE FASTEST STEAMBOATS 

set at an angle like the blades of a propeller, 
is enclosed by a drumlike casing. The disks 
at one end of the shaft are smaller than those 
at the other; the steam enters at the small end 
in a circle of jets that blow against the wings 
and set them and the whole shaft whirling. 
After passing the first disk and its little vanes, 
the steam goes through the holes of an inter- 
vening fixed partition that deflects it so that 
it blows afresh on the second, and so on to the 
third and fourth, blowing upon a succession of 
wheels, each set larger than the preceding one. 
Each of Parsons's steam-turbine engines is a 
series of turbines put in a steel casing, so that 
they use every ounce of the expansive power 
of the steam. 

It will be noticed that the little wind-turbine 
that you blow with your breath spins very 
rapidly; so, too, do the wheels spun by the 
steamy breath of the boilers, and Mr. Parsons 
found that the propeller fastened to the shaft 
of his engine revolved so fast that a vacuum 
was formed around the blades, and its work 
was not half done. So he lengthened his shaft 
and put three propellers on it, reducing the 
speed, and allowing all of the blades to catch 
the water strongly. 

The Turbina, speeding like an express train, 
93 



STORIES OF INVENTORS 

glided like a ghost over the water; the smoke 
poured from her stack and the cleft wave 
foamed at her prow, but there was little else 
to remind her inventor that 2,300 horse-power 
was being expended to drive her. There was 
no jar, no shock, no thumping of cylinders 
and pounding of rapidly revolving cranks; 
the motion of the engine was rotary, and the 
propeller shafts, spinning at 2,000 revolutions 
per minute, made no more vibration than a 
windmill whirling in the breeze. 

To stop the Turbina was an easy matter; 
Mr. Parsons had only to turn off the steam. 
But to make the vessel go backward another 
set of turbines was necessary, built to run the 
other way, and working on the same shaft. 
To reverse the direction, the steam was shut off 
the engines which revolved from right to left 
and turned on those designed to run backward, 
or from left to right. One set of the turbines 
revolved the propellers so that they pushed, 
and the other set, turning them the other way, 
pulled the vessel backward — one set revolving 
in a vacuum and doing no work, while the 
other supplied the power. 

The Parsons turbine-engines have been used 
to propel torpedo-boats, fast yachts, and vessels 
built to carry passengers across the English 
94 



,*:■> 







THE ENGINES OF THE ARROW 



THE FASTEST STEAMBOATS 

Channel, and recently it has been reported that 
two new transatlantic Cunarders are to be 
equipped with them. 

A few years after the Pilgrims sailed for the 
land of freedom in the tiny Mayflower a man 
named Branca built a steam-turbine that worked 
in a crude way on the same principle as Par- 
sons's modern giant. The pictures of this 
first steam-turbine show the head and shoulders 
of a bronze man set over the flaming brands 
of a wood fire; his metallic lungs are evidently 
filled with water, for a jet of steam spurts from 
his mouth and blows against the paddles of a 
horizontal turbine wheel, which, revolving, 
sets in motion some crude machinery. 

There is nothing picturesque about the steel- 
tube lungs of the boilers used by Parsons in 
the Turbina and the later boats built by him, 
and plain steel or copper pipes convey the steam 
to the whirling blades of the enclosed turbine 
wheels, but enormous power has been generated 
and marvellous speed gained. In the modern 
turbine a glowing coal fire, kept intensely hot 
by an artificial draft, has taken the place of 
the blazing sticks; the coils of steel tubes 
carrying the boiling water surrounded by 
flame replace the bronze-figure boiler, and 
the whirling, tightly jacketed turbine wheels, 
95 



STORIES OF INVENTORS 

that use every ounce of pressure and save all 
the steam, to be condensed to water and 
used over again, have grown out of the crude 
machine invented by Branca. 

As the engines of the Arrow are but perfected 
copies of the engine that drove the Clermont, 
so the power of the Turbina is derived from 
steam-motors that work on the same principle 
as the engine built by Branca in 1629, and his 
steam-turbine following the same old, old, ages 
old idea of the moss-covered, splashing, tireless 
water-wheel. 



96 



THE LIFE-SAVERS AND THEIR 
APPARATUS 



THE LIFE-SAVERS AND THEIR 
APPARATUS 

FORMING the outside boundary of Great 
South Bay, Long Island, a long row of 
sand-dunes faces the ocean. In summer groups 
of laughing bathers splash in the gentle surf at 
the foot of the low sand-hills, while the sun 
shines benignantly over all. The irregular 
points of vessels' sails notch the horizon as 
they are swept along by the gentle summer 
breezes. Old Ocean is in a playful mood, and 
even children sport in his waters. 

After the last summer visitor has gone, and 
the little craft that sail over the shallow bay 
have been hauled up high and dry, the pavilions 
deserted and the bathing-houses boarded up, 
the beaches take on a new aspect. The 
sun shines with a cold gleam, and the surf has 
an angry snarl to it as it surges up the sandy 
slopes and then recedes, dragging the pebbles 
after it with a rattling sound. The outer line 
of sand-bars, that in summer breaks the blue 
sea into sunny ripples and flashing whitecaps, 



STORIES OF INVENTORS 

then churns the water into fury and grips with 
a mighty hold the keel of any vessel that is 
unlucky enough to be driven on them. When 
the keen winter winds whip through the beach 
grasses on the dunes and throw spiteful handfuls 
of cutting sand and spray ; when the great waves 
pound the beach and the crested tops are blown 
off into vapour, then the life-saver patrolling 
the beach must be most vigilant. 

All along the coast, from Maine to Florida, 
along the Gulf of Mexico, the Great Lakes, and 
the Pacific, these men patrol the beach as a 
policeman walks his beat. When the winds 
blow hardest and sleet adds cutting force to 
the gale, then the surf men, whose business it 
is to save life regardless of their own comfort or 
safety, are most alert. 

All day the wind whistled through the grasses 
and moaned round the corners of the life-saving 
station; the gusts were cold, damp, and pene- 
trating. With the setting of the sun there was 
a lull, but when the patrols started out at 
eight o'clock, on their four-hours' tour of duty, 
the wind had risen again and was blowing 
with renewed force. Separating at the station, 
one surf man went east and the other west, 
following the line of the surf-beaten beach, 
each carrying on his back a recording clock 
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THE LIFE-SAVERS AND THEIR APPARATUS 

in a leather case, and also several candle-like 
Coston lights and a wooden handle. 

"Wind's blowing some," said one of the 
men, raising his voice above the howl of the 
blast. 

"Hope nothing hits the bar to-night," the 
other answered. Then both trudged off in 
opposite directions. 

With pea-coats buttoned tightly and sou'- 
westers tied down securely, the surfmen fought 
the gale on their watch-tour of duty. At the 
end of his beat each man stopped to take a key 
attached to a post, and, inserting it in the clock, 
record the time of his visit at that spot, for by 
this means is an actual record kept of the 
movements of the patrol at all times. 

With head bent low in deference to the force 
of the blast, and eyes narrowed to slits, the 
surfman searched the seething sea for the 
shadowy outlines of a vessel in trouble. 

Perchance as he looked his eye caught the 
dark bulk of a ship in a sea of foam, or the faint 
lines of spars and rigging through the spume 
and frozen haze — the unmistakable signs of a 
vessel in distress. An instant's concentrated 
gaze to make sure, then, taking a Coston signal 
from his pocket and fitting it to the handle, he 
struck the end on the sole of his boot. Like 

IOI 



STORIES OF INVENTORS 

a parlour match it caught fire and flared out 
a brilliant red light. This served to warn the 
crew of the vessel of their danger, or notified 
them that their distress was observed and that 
help was soon forthcoming; it also served, if the 
surf man was near enough to the station, to 
notify the lookout there of the ship in distress. 
If the distance was too great or the weather 
too thick, the patrol raced back with all possible 
speed to the station and reported what he 
had seen. The patrol, through his long vigils 
under all kinds of weather conditions, learns 
every foot of his beat thoroughly, and is able to 
tell exactly how and where a stranded vessel 
lies, and whether she is likely to be forced ovei 
on to the beach or whether she will stick on 
the outer bar far beyond the reach of a line 
shot from shore. 

In a few words spoken quickly and exactly 
to the point — for upon the accuracy of his* 
report much depends — he tells the situation. 
For different conditions different apparatus is 
needed. The vessel reported one stormy 
winter's night struck on the shoal that runs 
parallel to the outer Long Island beach, far 
beyond the reach of a line from shore. Deep 
water lies on both sides of the bar, and after 
the shoal is passed the broken water settles 
102 



THE LIFE-SAVERS AND THEIR APPARATUS 

down a little and gathers speed for its rush for 
the beach. These conditions were favourable 
for surf -boat work, and as the surf man told his 
tale the keeper or captain of the crew decided 
what to do. 

The crew ran the ever -ready surf -boat 
through the double doors of its house down 
the inclined plane to the beach. Resting 
in a carriage provided with a pair of broad- 
tired wheels, the light craft was hauled by its 
sturdy crew through the clinging sand and into 
the very teeth of the storm to the point nearest 
the wreck. 

The surf rolled in with a roar that shook 
the ground; fringed with foam that showed 
even through that dense midnight darkness, 
the waves were hungry for their prey. Each 
breaker curved high above the heads of the 
men, and, receding, the undertow sucked at 
their feet and tried to drag them under. It 
did not seem possible that a boat could be 
launched in such a sea. With scarcely a word 
of command, however, every man, knowing 
from long practice his position and specific 
duties, took his station on either side of the 
buoyant craft and, rushing into the surf, 
launched her; climbing aboard, every man took 
his appointed place, while the keeper, a long 
103 



STORIES OF INVENTORS 

steering-oar in his hands, stood at the stern. 
All pulled steadily, while the steersman, with a 
sweep of his oar, kept her head to the seas and 
with consummate skill and judgment avoided 
the most dangerous crests, until the first watery 
rampart was passed. Adapting their stroke 
to the rough water, the six sturdy rowers 
propelled their twenty-five-foot unsinkable boat 
at good speed, though it seemed infinitely 
slow when they thought of the crew of the 
stranded vessel off in the darkness, helpless and 
hopeless. Each man wore a cork jacket, but 
in spite of their encumbrances they were mar- 
vellously active. 

As is sometimes the case, before the surf -boat 
reached the distressed vessel she lurched over 
the bar and went driving for the beach. 

The crew in the boat could do nothing, and 
the men aboard the ship were helpless. Climb- 
ing up into the rigging, the sailors waited for 
the vessel to strike the beach, and the life-savers 
put for shore again to get the apparatus needed 
for the new situation. To load the surf -boat 
with the wrecked, half -frozen crew of the 
stranded vessel, when there was none too much 
room for the oarsmen, and then encounter the 
fearful surf, was a method to be pursued only 
in case of dire need. To reach the wreck from 
104 



THE LIFE-SAVERS AND THEIR APPARATUS 

shore was a much safer and surer method of 
saving life, not only for those on the vessel, 
but also for the surf men. 

The beach apparatus has received the greatest 
attention from inventors, since that part of the 
life-savers' outfit is depended upon to rescue 
the greatest number. 

With a rush the surf -boat rolled in on a giant 
wave amid a smother of foam, and no sooner 
had her keel grated on the sand than her crew 
were out knee-deep in the swirling water and 
were dragging her up high and dry. 

A minute later the entire crew, some pulling, 
some steering, dragged out the beach wagon. 
A light framework supported by two broad- 
tired wheels carried all the apparatus for rescue 
work from the beach. Each member of the 
crew had his appointed place and definite duties, 
according to printed instructions which each 
had learned by heart, and when the command 
was given every man jumped to his place as a 
well-trained man-of-war's-man takes his position 
at his gun. 

Over hummocks of sand and wreckage, 
across little inlets made by the waves, in the 
face of blinding sleet and staggering wind, the 
life-savers dragged the beach wagon on the run. 

Through the mist and shrouding white of 
*©5 



STORIES OF INVENTORS 

the storm the outlines of the stranded vessel 
could just be distinguished. 

Bringing the wagon to the nearest point, 
the crew unloaded their appliances. 

Two men then unloaded a sand-anchor — an 
immense cross — and immediately set to work 
with shovels to dig a hole in the sand and bury 
it. While this was being done two others were 
busy placing a bronze cannon (two and one- 
half -inch bore) in position; another got out 
boxes containing small rope wound criss-cross 
fashion on wooden pins set upright in the 
bottom. The pins merely held the rope in 
its coils until ready for use, when board and 
pegs were removed. The free end of the line 
was attached to a ring in the end of the long 
projectile which the captain carried, together 
with a box of ammunition slung over his 
shoulders. The cylindrical projectile was four- 
teen and one-half inches long and weighed 
seventeen pounds. All these operations were 
carried on at once and with utmost speed in 
spite of the great difficulties and the darkness. 

While the surf boomed and the wind roared, 
the captain sighted the gun — aided by Nos. i 
and 2 of the crew — aiming for the outstretched 
arms of the yards of the wrecked vessel. With 
the wind blowing at an almost hurricane rate, 
106 



THE LIFE-SAVERS AND THEIR APPARATUS 

it was a difficult shot, but long practice under 
all kinds of difficulties had taught the captain 
just how to aim. As he pulled the lanyard, the 
little bronze cannon spit out fire viciously, and 
the long projectile, to which had been attached 
the end of the coiled line, sailed off on its errand 
of mercy. With a whir the line spun out of the 
box coil after coil, while the crew peered out 
over the breaking seas, to see if the keeper's 
aim was true. At last the line stopped uncoil- 
ing and the life-savers knew that the shot 
had landed somewhere. For a time nothing 
happened, the slender rope reached out into 
the boiling waves, but no answering tugs 
conveyed messages to the waiting surfmen 
from the wrecked seamen. 

At length the line began to slip through the 
fingers of the keeper who held it and moved 
seaward, so those on shore knew that the rope 
had been found and its use understood. The 
line carried out by the projectile served merely 
to drag out a heavy rope on which was run a 
sort of trolley carrying a breeches-buoy or sling. 

The men on the wreck understood the use of 
the apparatus, or read the instructions printed 
in several languages with which the heavy rope 
was tagged. They made the end of the strong 
line fast to the mast well above the reach of 
107 



STORIES OF INVENTORS 

the hungry seas, and the surf men secured their 
end to the deeply buried sand-anchor, an in- 
verted V-shaped crotch placed under the rope 
holding it above the water on the shore end. 
When this had been done, as much of the slack 
was taken up as possible, and the wreck was 
connected with the beach with a kind of 
suspension bridge. 

All this occupied much time, for the hands 
of the sailors were numb with cold, the ropes 
stiff with ice, while the wild and angry wind 
snatched at the tackle and tore at the clinging 
figures. 

In a trice the willing arms on shore hauled 
out the buoy by means of an endless line 
reaching out to the wreck and back to shore. 
Then with a joy that comes only to those who 
are saving a fellow-creature from death, the 
life-savers saw a man climb into the stout 
canvas breeches of the hanging buoy, and felt 
the tug on the whip-line that told them that 
the rescue had begun. With a will they pulled 
on the line, and the buoy, carrying its precious 
burden, rolled along the hawser, swinging in the 
wind, and now and then dipping the half -frozen 
man in the crests of the waves. It seemed a 
perilous journey, but as long as the wreck held 
together and the mast remained firmly upright 
108 



THE LIFE-SAVERS AND THEIR APPARATUS 

the passengers on this improvised aerial railway 
were safe. 

One after the other the crew were taken 
ashore in this way, the life-savers hauling the 
breeches-buoy forward and back, working like 
madmen to complete their work before the 
wreck should break up. None too soon the 
last man was landed, for he had hardly been 
dragged ashore when T:he sturdy mast, being 
able to stand the buffeting of the waves no 
longer, toppled over and floated ashore. 

The life-savers' work is not over when the 
crew of a vessel is saved, for the apparatus 
must be packed on the beach wagon and returned 
to the station, while the shipwrecked crew 
is provided with dry clothing, fed, and cared 
for. The patrol continues on his beat through- 
out the night without regard to the hardships 
that have already been undergone. 

The success of the surfmen in saving lives 
depends not only on their courage and strength, 
supplemented by continuous training which 
has been proved time and again, but the 
wonderful record of the life-saving service 
is due as well to the efficient appliances that 
make the work of the men effective. 

Besides the apparatus already described, each 
station is provided with a kind of boat-car 
109 



STORIES OF INVENTORS 

which has a capacity for six or seven persons, 
and is built so that its passengers are entirely 
enclosed, the hatch by which they enter being 
clamped down from the inside. When there 
are a great many people to be saved, this car 
is used in place of the breeches-buoy. It is hung 
on the hawser by rings at either end and pulled 
back and forth by the whip -line ; or, if the masts 
of the vessel are carried away and there is 
nothing to which the heavy rope can be attached 
so that it will stretch clear above the wave- 
crests, in such an emergency the life-car floats 
directly on the water, and the whip-line is used 
to pull it to the shore with wrecked passengers 
and back to the wreck for more. 

Everything that would help to save life under 
any condition is provided, and a number of 
appliances are duplicated in case one or more 
should be lost or damaged at a critical time. 
Signal flags are supplied, and the surf men are 
taught their use as a means of communicating 
with people aboard a vessel in distress. Tele- 
phones connect the stations, so that in case of 
any special difficulty two or even three crews 
may be combined. When wireless telegraphy 
comes into general use aboard ship the stations 
will doubtless be equipped with this apparatus 
also, so that ships may be warned of danger. 






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THE LIFE-SAVERS AND THEIR APPARATUS 

The 10,000 miles of the United States ocean, 
gulf, and Great Lakes coasts, exclusive of Alaska 
and the island possessions, are guarded by 
265 stations and houses of refuge at this 
writing, and new ones are added every year. 
Practically all of this immense coast -line is 
patrolled or watched over during eight or nine 
stormy months, and those that "go down to 
the sea in ships" may- be sure of a helping 
hand in time of trouble. 

The dangerous coasts are more thickly studded 
with stations, and the sections that are com- 
paratively free from life-endangering reefs are 
provided with refuge houses where supplies are 
stored and where wrecked survivors may find 
shelter. 

The Atlantic coast, being the most dangerous 
to shipping, is guarded by more than 175 
stations; the Great Lakes require fifty or more 
to care for the survivors of the vessels that 
are yearly wrecked on their harbourless shores. 
For the Gulf of Mexico eight are considered 
sufficient, and the long Pacific coast also re- 
quires but eight. 

The Life-Saving Service, formerly under the 

Treasury Department, now an important part 

of the Department of Commerce and Labour, 

was organised by Sumner I. Kimball, who was 

in 



STORIES OF INVENTORS 

put at its head in 1871, and the great success 
and glory it has won is largely due to his energy 
and efficient enthusiasm. 

The Life-Saving Service publishes a report 
of work accomplished through the year. It is 
a dry recital of facts and figures, but if the 
reader has a little imagination he can see the 
record of great deeds of heroism and self-sacrifice 
written between the lines. 

As vessels labour through the wintry seas 
along our coasts, and the on-shore winds roar 
through the rigging, while the fog, mist or 
snow hangs like a curtain all around, it is 
surely a comfort to those at sea to know that 
all along the dangerous coast men specially 
trained, and equipped with the most efficient 
apparatus known, are always ready to stretch 
out a helping hand. 



112 



MOVING PICTURES 



MOVING PICTURES 

Some Strange Subjects and How They 
Were Taken 

THE grandstand of the Sheepshead Bay 
race-track, one spring afternoon, was 
packed solidly with people, and the broad, 
terra-cotta-coloured track was fenced in with a 
human wall near the judges' stand. The famous 
Suburban was to be run, and people flocked 
from every direction to see one of the greatest 
horse-races of the year. While the band played 
gaily, and the shrill cries of programme 
venders punctuated the hum of the voices of 
the multitude, and while the stable boys walked 
their aristocratic charges, shrouded in blankets, 
exercising them sedately — in the midst of all 
this movement, hubbub, and excitement a man 
a little to one side, apparently unconscious of 
all the uproar, was busy with a big box set up 
on a portable framework six or seven feet above 
the ground. The man was a new kind of 
photographer, and his big box was a camera 
ii5 



STORIES OF INVENTORS 

with which he purposed to take a series of 
pictures of the race. Above the box, which 
was about two and a half feet square, was an 
electric motor from which ran a belt connecting 
with the inner mechanism; from the front of 
the box protruded the lens, its glassy eye so 
turned as to get a full sweep of the track; 
nearby on the ground were piled the storage 
batteries which were used to supply the current 
for the motor. 

As the time for the race drew near the 
excitement increased, figures darted here, there 
and everywhere, the bobbing, brightly coloured 
hats of the women in the great slanting field of 
the grandstand suggesting bunches of flowers 
agitated by the breeze. Then the horses 
paraded in a thoroughbred fashion, as if they 
appreciated their lengthy pedigrees and under- 
stood their importance. 

At last the splendid animals were lined up 
across the track, their small jockeys in their 
brilliantly coloured jackets hunched up like 
monkeys on their backs. Then the enormous 
crowd was quiet, the band was still, even the 
noisy programme venders ceased calling their 
wares, and the photographer stood quietly beside 
his camera, the motor humming, his hand on 
the switch that starts the internal machinery. 
116 



MOVING PICTURES 

Suddenly the starter dropped his arm, the 
barring gate flew up, and the horses sprang 
forward. "They're off ! " came from a thousand 
throats in unison. The band struck up a lively 
air, and the vast assemblage watched with 
excited eyes the flying horses. As the horses 
swept on round the turn and down the back 
stretch the people seemed to be drawn from 
their seats, and by the time the racers 
made the turn leading into the home-stretch 
almost every one was standing and the roar 
of yelling voices was deafening. 

All this time the photographer kept his eyes 
on his machine, which was rattling like a 
rapidly beaten drum, the cyclopean eye of the 
camera making impressions on a sensitised 
film-ribbon at the rate of forty a second, and 
every movement of the flying legs, of the urging 
jockeys, even the puffs of dust that rose at the 
falling of each iron-shod hoof, was recorded 
for all time by the eye of the camera. 

The horses entered the home-stretch and in 
a terrific burst of speed flashed by the throngs 
of yelling people and under the wire, a mere blur 
of shining bodies, brilliant colours of the jockeys' 
blouses, and yellow dust. The Suburban was 
over, and the great crowd that had come miles 
to see a race that lasted but a little more than 
117 



STORIES OF INVENTORS 

two minutes (a grand struggle of giants, how- 
ever), sank back into their seats or relaxed 
their straining gaze in a way that said plainer 
than words could say it, "It is over." 

It was 4:45 in the afternoon. The photo- 
grapher was all activity. The minute the race 
was over the motor above the great camera 
was stopped and the box was opened. From its 
dark interior another box about six inches 
square and two inches deep was taken : this box 
contained the record of the race, on a narrow 
strip of film two hundred and fifty feet long, 
the latent image of thousands of separate 
pictures. 

Then began another race against time, for 
it was necessary to take that long ribbon across 
the city of Brooklyn, over the Bridge, across 
New York, over the North River by ferry to 
Hoboken on the Jersey side, develop, fix, and 
dry the two-hundred-and-fifty-foot-long film- 
negative, make a positive or reversed print on 
another two-hundred-and-fifty-foot film, carry 
it through the same photographic process, and 
show the spirited scene on the stereopticon 
screen of a metropolitan theatre the same 
evening. 

That evening a great audience in the 
dark interior of a New York theatre sat 
118 








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MOVING PICTURES 

watching a white sheet stretched across the 
stage; suddenly its white expanse grew dark, 
and against the background appeared "The 
Suburban, run this afternoon at 4:45 at 
Sheepshead Bay track; won by Alcedo, in 
2 minutes 53-5 seconds." 

Then appeared on the screen the picture of 
the scene that the thousands had travelled far 
to see that same afternoon. There were the 
wide, smooth track, the tower-like judges' stand, 
the oval turf of the inner field, and as the 
audience looked the starter moved his arm, and 
the rank of horses, life-size and quivering with 
excitement, shot forth. From beginning to end 
the great struggle was shown to the people 
seated comfortably in the city playhouse, 
several miles from the track where the race 
was run, just two hours and fifteen minutes after 
the winning horse dashed past the judges' 
stand. Every detail was reproduced; every 
movement of horses and jockeys, even the 
clouds of dust that rose from the hoof -beats, 
appeared clearly on the screen. And the 
audience rose gradually to their feet, straining 
forward to catch every movement, thrilled with 
excitement as were the mighty crowds at the 
actual race. 

To produce the effect that made the people 
119 



STORIES OF INVENTORS 

in the theatre forget their surroundings and 
feel as if they were actually overlooking the 
race-track itself, about five thousand separate 
photographs were shown. 

It was discovered long ago that if a series of 
pictures, each of which showed a difference in 
the position of the legs of a man running, for 
instance, was passed quickly before the eye 
so that the space between the pictures would 
be screened, the figure would apparently move. 
The eyes retain the image they see for a fraction 
of a second, and if a new image carrying the 
movement a little farther along is presented 
in the same place, the eyes are deceived so that 
the object apparently actually moves. An 
ingenious toy called the zoltrope, which was 
based on this optical illusion, was made long 
before Edison invented the vitascope, Herman 
Caster the biograph and mutoscope, or the 
Lumiere brothers in France devised the cine- 
matograph. All these different moving-picture 
machines work on the same principle, differing 
only in their mechanism. 

A moving-picture machine is really a rapid- 
fire repeating camera provided with a lens 
allowing of a very quick exposure. Internal 
mechanism, operated by a hand-crank or electric 
motor, moves the unexposed film into position 
1 20 



MOVING PICTURES 

behind the lens and also opens and closes the 
shutter at just the proper moment. The same 
machinery feeds down a fresh section of the 
ribbon-like film into position and coils the 
exposed portion in a dark box, just as the film 
of a kodak is rolled off one spool and, after 
exposure, is wound up on another. The film 
used in the biograph when taking the Suburban 
was two and three-fourth inches wide and 
several hundred feet long ; about forty exposures 
were made per second, and for each exposure 
the film had to come to a dead stop before the 
lens and then the shutter was opened, the light 
admitted for about one three-hundredth of 
a second, the shutter closed, and a new 
section of film moved into place, while the 
exposed portion was wound upon a spool in 
a light-tight box. The long, flexible film is 
perforated along both edges, and these per- 
forations fit over toothed wheels which guide 
it down to the lens; the holes in the celluloid 
strip are also used by the feeding mechanism. 
In order that the interval between the pictures 
shall always be the same, the film must be 
held firmly in each position in turn ; the perfo- 
rations and toothed mechanism accomplish 
this perfectly. 

In taking the picture of the Suburban race 

121 



STORIES OF INVENTORS 

almost five thousand separate negatives (all on 
one strip of film, however) were made during 
the two minutes five and three-fifths seconds 
the race was being run. Each negative was 
perfectly clear, and each was different, though 
if one negative was compared to its neighbour 
scarcely any variance would be noted. 

After the film has been exposed, the light- 
tight box containing it is taken out of the 
camera and taken to a gigantic dark-room, 
where it is wound on a great reel and developed, 
just as the image on a kodak film is brought 
out. The reel is hung by its axle over a great 
trough containing gallons of developer, so that 
the film wound upon it is submerged; and as the 
reel is revolved all of the sensitised surface is 
exposed to the action of the chemicals and 
gradually the latent pictures are developed. 
After the development has gone far enough, 
the reel, still carrying the film, is dipped in clean 
water and washed, and then a dip in a similar 
bath of clearing-and-fixing solution makes 
the negatives permanent — followed by a final 
washing in clean water. It is simply develop- 
ing on a grand scale, thousands of separate 
pictures on hundreds of feet of film being 
developed at once. 

A negative, however, is of no use unless a 

122 



MOVING PICTURES 

positive or print of some kind is made from it. 
If shown through a stereopticon, for instance, 
a negative would make all the shadows on the 
screen appear lights, and vice versa. A positive, 
therefore, is made by running a fresh film, with 
the negative, through a machine very much 
like the moving-picture camera. The unexposed 
surface is behind that of the negative, and at 
the proper intervals the shutter is opened and 
the admitted light prints the image of the 
negative on the unexposed film, just as a lantern 
slide is made, in fact, or a print on sensitised 
paper. The positives are made by this machine 
at the rate of a score or so in a second. Of 
course, the positive is developed in the same 
manner as the negative. 

Therefore, in order to show the people 
in the theatre the Suburban, five hundred feet 
of film was exposed, developed, fixed, and 
dried, and nearly ten thousand separate and 
complete pictures were produced, in the space 
of two hours and fifteen minutes, including the 
time occupied in taking the films to and from 
the track, factory, and theatre. 

Originally, successive pictures of moving 
objects were taken for scientific purposes. A 
French scientist who was studying aerial navi- 
gation set up a number of cameras and took 
123 



STORIES OF INVENTORS 

successive pictures of a bird's flight. Doctor 
Muy bridge, of Philadelphia, photographed 
trotting horses with a camera of his own 
invention that made exposures in rapid suc- 
cession, in order to learn the different positions 
of the legs of animals while in rapid motion. 

A Frenchman also — M. Mach — photographed 
a plant of rapid growth twice a day from exactly 
the same position for fifty consecutive days. 
When the pictures were thrown on the screen 
in rapid order the plant seemed to grow visibly. 

The moving pictures provide a most attrac- 
tive entertainment, and it was this feature of 
the idea, undoubtedly, that furnished the 
incentive to inventors. The public is always 
willing to pay well for a good amusement. 

The makers of the moving-picture films have 
photographic studios suitably lighted and fitted 
with all the necessary stage accessories (scenery, 
properties, etc.) where the little comedies shown 
on the screens of the theatres are acted for the 
benefit of the rapid-fire camera and its operators, 
who are often the only spectators. One of 
these studios in the heart of the city of New 
York is so brilliantly lighted by electricity 
that pictures may be taken at full speed, thirty 
to forty-five per second, at any time of day 
or night. Another company has an open-air 
124 



MOVING PICTURES 

gallery large enough for whole troops of cavalry 
to maneuver before the camera, or where the 
various evolutions of a working fire department 
may be photographed. 

Of course, when the pictures are taken in a 
studio or place prepared for the work the 
photographic part is easy — the camera man 
sets up his machine and turns the crank while 
the performers do the rest. But some extra- 
ordinary pictures have been taken when the 
photographer had to seek his scene and work 
his machine under trying and even dangerous 
circumstances. 

During the Boer War in South Africa two 
operators for the Biograph Company took their 
bulky machine (it weighed about eighteen 
hundred pounds) to the very firing-line and 
took pictures of battles between the British 
and the Burghers when they were exposed to 
the fire of both armies. On one occasion, in 
fact, the operator who was turning the 
mechanism — he sat on a bicycle frame, the 
sprocket of which was connected by a chain 
with the interior machinery — during a battle, 
was knocked from his place by the concussion 
of a shell that exploded nearby; nevertheless, 
the film was saved, and the same man rode 
on horseback nearly seventy-five miles across 

125 



STORIES OF INVENTORS 

country to the nearest railroad point so that the 
precious photographic record might be sent to 
London and shown to waiting audiences there. 

Pictures were taken by the kinetoscope show- 
ing an ascent of Mount Blanc, the operator 
of the camera necessarily making the perilous 
journey also; different stages of the ascent 
were taken, some of them far above the clouds. 
For this series of pictures a film eight hundred 
feet long was required, and 12,800 odd exposures 
or negatives were made. 

Successive pictures have been taken at 
intervals during an ocean voyage to show the 
life aboard ship, the swing of the great seas, 
and the rolling and pitching of the steamer. 
The heave and swing of the steamer and the 
mountainous waves have been so realistically 
shown on the screen in the theatre that some 
squeamish spectators have been made almost 
seasick. It might be comforting to those who 
were made unhappy by the sight of the heaving 
seas to know that the operator who took one 
series of sea pictures, when lashed with his 
machine in the lookout place on the foremast 
of the steamer, suffered terribly from seasick- 
ness, and would have been glad enough to set 
his foot on solid ground; nevertheless, he stuck 
to his post and completed the series. 
126 



MOVING PICTURES 

It was a biograph operator that was engaged 
in taking pictures of a fire department rushing 
to a fire. Several pieces of apparatus had 
passed — an engine, hook-and-ladder company, 
and the chief; the operator, with his (then) 
bulky apparatus, large camera, storage batteries, 
etc., stood right in the centre of the street, 
facing the stream of engines, hose-wagons, and 
fire-patrol men. In order to show the contrast, 
an old-time hand-pump engine, dragged by a 
dozen men and boys, came along at full speed 
down the street, and behind and to one side 
of them followed a two-horse hose-wagon, 
going like mad. The men running with the 
old-time engine, not realising how narrow the 
space was and unaware of the plunging horses 
behind, passed the biograph man on one side 
on the dead run. The driver of the rapidly 
approaching team saw that there was no room 
for him to pass on the other side of the camera 
man, and his horses were going too fast to stop 
in the space that remained. He had but an 
instant to decide between the dozen men and 
their antiquated machine and the moving- 
picture outfit. He chose the latter, and, with a 
warning shout to the photographer, bore straight 
down on the camera, which continued to do 
its work faithfully, taking dozens of pictures a 
127 



STORIES OF INVENTORS 

second, recording even the strained, anxious 
expression on the face of the driver. The 
pole of the hose-wagon struck the camera-box 
squarely and knocked it into fragments, and the 
wheels passed quickly over the pieces, the 
photographer meanwhile escaping somehow. 
By some lucky chance the box holding the coiled 
exposed film came through the wreck unscathed. 
When that series was shown on the screen in 
a theatre the audience saw the engine and hook- 
and-ladder in turn come nearer and nearer and 
then rush by, then the line of running men with 
the old engine, and then — and their flesh crept 
when they saw it — a team of plunging horses 
coming straight toward them at frightful 
speed. The driver's face could be seen between 
the horses' heads, distorted with effort and fear. 
Straight on the horses came, their nostrils 
distended, their great muscles straining, their 
fore hoofs striking out almost, it seemed, in 
the faces of the people in the front row of seats. 
People shrank back, some women shrieked, 
and when the plunging horses seemed almost 
on them, at the very climax of excitement, 
the screen was darkened and the picture 
blotted out. The camera taking the pictures 
had continued to work to the very instant it 
was struck and hurled to destruction. 
128 



MOVING PICTURES 

In addition to the stereopticon and its 
attendant mechanism, which is only suitable 
when the pictures are to be shown to an audience, 
a machine has been invented for the use of 
an individual or a small group of people. In 
the mutoscope the positives or prints are made 
on long strips of heavy bromide paper, instead 
of films, and are generally enlarged; the strip 
is cut up after development and mounted 
on a cylinder, so they radiate like the spokes of a 
wheel, and are set in the same consecutive order 
in which they were taken. The thousands of 
cards bearing the pictures at the outer ends are 
placed in a box, so that when the wheel of 
pictures is turned, by means of a crank attached 
to the axle, a projection holds each card in turn 
before the lens through which the observer 
looks. The projection in the top of the box 
acts like the thumb turning the pages of a 
book. Each of the pictures is presented in 
such rapid succession that the object appears 
to move, just as the scenes thrown on the screen 
by a lantern show action. 

The mutoscope widens the use of motion- 
photography infinitely. The United States 
Government will use it to illustrate the workings 
of many of its departments at the World's Fair 
at St. Louis: the life aboard war-ships, the 
129 



STORIES OF INVENTORS 

handling of big guns, army maneuvers, the life- 
saving service, post-office workings, and, in fact, 
many branches of the government service will 
be explained pictorially by this means. 

Agents for manufacturers of large machinery 
will be able to show to prospective purchasers 
pictures of their machines in actual operation. 
Living, moving portraits have been taken, and 
by means of a hand machine can be as easily 
examined as pictures through a stereoscope. 
It is quite within the bounds of possibility 
that circulating libraries of moving pictures 
will be established, and that every public 
school will have a projecting apparatus for the 
use of films, and a stereopticon or a mutoscope. 
In fact, a sort of circulating library already 
exists, films or mutoscope pictures being 
rented for a reasonable sum; and thus many of 
the most important of the world's happenings 
may be seen as they actually occurred. 

Future generations will have histories 
illustrated with vivid motion pictures, as all 
the great events of the day, processions, cele- 
brations, battles, great contests on sea and land 
are now recorded by the all-seeing eye of the 
motion-photographer's camera. 



130 



BRIDGE BUILDERS AND SOME OF 
THEIR ACHIEVEMENTS 



BRIDGE BUILDERS AND SOME 
OF THEIR ACHIEVEMENTS 

TN the old days when Rome was supreme 
■*■ a Caesar decreed that a bridge should be 
built to carry a military road across a valley, 
or ordered that great stone arches should be 
raised to conduct a stream of water to a city; 
and after great toil, and at the cost of the lives 
of unnumbered labourers, the work was done — 
so well done, in fact, that much of it is still 
standing, and some is still doing service. 

In much the same regal way the managers of 
a railroad order a steel bridge flung across a 
chasm in the midst of a wilderness far from 
civilisation, or command that a new structure 
shall be substituted for an old one without 
disturbing traffic ; and, lo and behold, it is done 
in a surprisingly short time. But the new 
bridges, in contrast to the old ones, are as spider 
webs compared to the overarching branches of 
a great tree. The old type, built of solid 
masonry, is massive, ponderous, while the new, 
slender, graceful, is built of steel. 
133 



STORIES OF INVENTORS 

One day a bridge-building company in 
Pennsylvania received the specifications giving 
the dimensions and particulars of a bridge that 
an English railway company wished to build 
in far-off Burma, above a great gorge more than 
eight hundred feet deep and about a half-mile 
wide. From the meagre description of the 
conditions and requirements, and from the 
measurements furnished by the railroad, the 
engineers of the American bridge company 
created a viaduct. Just as an author creates 
a story or a painter a picture, so these engineers 
built a bridge on paper, except that the work 
of the engineers' imagination had to be figured 
out mathematically, proved, and reproved. 
Not only was the soaring structure created out 
of bare facts and dry statistics, but the thickness 
of every bolt and the strain to be borne by 
every rod were predetermined accurately. 

And when the plans of the great viaduct were 
completed the engineers knew the cost of every 
part, and felt so sure that the actual bridge in 
far-off Burma could be built for the estimated 
amount, that they put in a bid for the work 
that proved to be far below the price asked by 
English builders. 

And so this company whose works are in 
Pennsylvania was awarded the contract for the 
J 34 




1 • 






-£ .S3 






BRIDGE-BUILDING ACHIEVEMENTS 

Gokteik viaduct in Burma, half-way round the 
world from the factory. 

In the midst of a wilderness, among 
an ancient people whose language and habits 
were utterly strange to most Americans, in 
a tropical country where modern machinery 
and appliances were practically unknown, a 
small band of men from the young republic 
contracted to build the greatest viaduct the 
world had ever seen. All the material, all the 
tools and machinery, were to be carried to the 
opposite side of the earth and dumped on the 
edge of the chasm. From the heaps of metal 
the small band of American workmen and 
engineers, aided by the native labourers, were to 
build the actual structure, strong and enduring, 
that was conceived by the engineers and reduced 
to working-plans in far-off Pennsylvania 

From ore dug out of the Pennsylvania 
mountains the steel was made and, piece by 
piece, the parts were rolled, riveted, or welded 
together so that every section was exactly 
according to the measurements laid out on the 
plan. As each part was finished it was marked 
to correspond with the plan and also to show 
its relation to its neighbour. It was like a 
gigantic puzzle. The parts were made to fit 
each other accurately, so that when the work- 
135 



STORIES OF INVENTORS 

men in Burma came to put them together the 
tangle of beams and rods, of trusses and braces 
should be assembled into a perfect, orderly- 
structure — each part in its place and each 
doing its share of the work. 

With men trained to work with ropes and 
tackle collected from an Indian seaport, and 
native riveters gathered from another place, 
Mr. J. C. Turk, the engineer in charge, set to 
work with the American bridgemen and the 
constructing engineer to build a bridge out of 
the pieces of steel that lay in heaps along the 
brink of the gorge. First, the traveller, or 
derrick, shipped from America in sections, was 
put together, and its long arm extended from 
the end of the tracks on which it ran over 
the abyss. 

From above the great steel beams were 
lowered to the masonry foundations of the first 
tower and securely bolted to them, and so, 
piece by piece, the steel girders were suspended 
in space and swung this way and that until each 
was exactly in its proper position and then 
riveted permanently. The great valley re- 
sounded with the blows of hammers on red- 
hot metal, and the clangour of steel on steel 
broke the silence of the tropic wilderness. The 
towers rose up higher and higher, until the tops 
136 



BRIDGE-BUILDING ACHIEVEMENTS 

were level with the rim of the valley, and as 
they were completed the horizontal girders were 
built on them, the rails laid, and the traveller 
pushed forward until its arm swung over the 
foundation of the next tower. 

And so over the deep valley the slender 
structure gradually won its way, supporting 
itself on its own web as it crawled along like 
a spider. Indeed, so tall were its towers and 
so slender its steel cords and beams that from 
below it appeared as fragile as a spider's web, and 
the men, poised on the end of swinging beams 
or standing on narrow platforms hundreds of 
feet in air, looked not unlike the flies caught in 
the web. 

The towers, however, were designed to sustain 
a heavy train and locomotive and to withstand 
the terrific wind of the monsoon. The pressure of 
such a wind on a 320-foot tower is tremendous. 
The bridge was completed within the specified time 
and bore without flinching all the severe tests to 
which it was put. Heavy trains — much heavier 
than would ordinarily be run over the viaduct 
— steamed slowly across the great steel trestle 
while the railroad engineers examined with 
utmost care every section that would be likely 
to show weakness. But the designers had 
planned well, the steel -workers had done their 
J 37 



STORIES OF INVENTORS 

full duty, and the American bridgemen had 
seen to it that every rivet was properly headed 
and every bolt screwed tight — and no fault 
could be found. 

The bridge engineer's work is very diversified, 
since no two bridges are alike. At one time he 
might be ordered to span a stream in the midst 
of a populous country where every aid is at 
hand, and his next commission might be the 
building of a difficult bridge in a foreign wilder- 
ness far beyond the edge of civilisation. 

Bridge-building is really divided into four 
parts, and each part requires a different kind 
of knowledge and experience. 

First, the designer has to have the imagina- 
tion to see the bridge as iirwill be when it is com- 
pleted, and then he must be able to lay it out on 
paper section by section, estimating the size of 
the parts necessary for the stress they will have 
to bear, the weight of the load they will have 
to carry, the effect of the wind, the contraction 
and expansion of cold and heat, and vibration; 
all these things must be thought of and con- 
sidered in planning every part and determining 
the size of each. Also he must know what 
kind of material to use that is best fitted to 
stand each strain, whether to use steel that is 
rigid or that which is so flexible that it can be 
138 



BRIDGE-BUILDING ACHIEVEMENTS 

tied in a knot. On the designer depends the 
price asked for the work, and so it is his business 
to invent, for each bridge is a separate problem 
in invention, a bridge that will carry the 
required weight with the least expenditure of 
material and labour and at the same time be 
strong enough to carry very much greater 
loads than it is ever likely to be called upon 
to sustain. The designer is often the constructor 
as well, and he is always a man of great practical 
experience. He has in his time stepped out 
on a foot- wide girder over a rushing stream, 
directing his men, and he has floundered in the 
mud of a river bottom in a caisson far below 
the surface of the stream, while the compressed 
air kept the ooze from flowing in and drowning 
him and his workmen. 

The second operation of making the pieces 
that go into the structure is simply the following 
out of the clearly drawn plans furnished by the 
designing engineers. Different grades of steel 
and iron are moulded or forged into shape and 
riveted together, each part being made the 
exact size and shape required, even the position 
of the holes through which the bolts or rivets 
are to go that are to secure it to the neighbouring 
section being marked on the plan. 

The foundations for bridges are not always 
J 39 



STORIES OF INVENTORS 

put down by the builders of the bridge proper; 
that is a work by itself and requires special 
experience. On the strength and permanency 
of the foundation depends the life of the bridge. 
While the foundries and steel mills are making 
the metal-work the foundations are being laid. 
If the bridge is to cross a valley, or carry the 
roadway on the level across a depression, the 
placing of the foundations is a simple matter of 
digging or blasting out a big hole and laying 
courses of masonry ; but if a pier is to be built 
in water, or the land on which the towers are 
to stand is unstable, then the problem is 
much more difficult. 

For bridges like those that connect New York 
and Brooklyn, the towers of which rest on bed- 
rock below the river's bottom, caissons are sunk 
and the massive masonry is built upon them. 
If you take a glass and sink it in water, bottom 
up, carefully, so that the air will not escape, 
it will be noticed that the water enters the 
glass but a little way: the air prevents the 
water from filling the glass. The caisson works 
on the same principle, except that the air in 
the great boxlike chamber is highly compressed 
by powerful pumps and keeps the water and 
river ooze out altogether. 

The caissons of the third bridge across the 
140 



BRIDGE-BUILDING ACHIEVEMENTS 

East River were as big as a good-sized house — 
about one hundred feet long and eighty feet 
wide. It took five large tugs more than two 
days to get one of them in its proper place. 
Anchored in its exact position, it was slowly 
sunk by building the masonry of the tower 
upon it, and when the lower edges of the great 
box rested on the bottom of the river men 
were sent down through an air-lock which 
worked a good deal like the lock of a canal. 
The men, two or three at a time, entered a small 
round chamber built of steel which was fitted 
with two air-tight doors at the top and bottom; 
when they were inside the air-lock, the upper 
door was closed and clamped tight, just as the 
gates leading from the lower level of a canal 
are closed after the boat is in the lock; then 
very gradually the air in the compartment is 
compressed by an air-compressor until the 
pressure in the air-lock is the same as that 
in the caisson chamber, when the lower door 
opened and allowed the men to enter the great 
dim room. Imagine a room eighty by one 
hundred feet, low and criss-crossed by massive 
timber braces, resting on the black, slimy mud 
of the river bottom; electric lights shine dimly, 
showing the half-naked workmen toiling with 
tremendous energy by reason of the extra 
141 



STORIES OF INVENTORS 

quantity of oxygen in the compressed air. The 
workmen dug the earth and mud from under 
the iron-shod edges of the caisson, and the 
weight of the masonry being continually added 
to above sunk the great box lower and lower. 
From time to time the earth was mixed with 
water and sucked to the surface by a great 
pump. With hundreds of tons of masonry 
above, and the watery mud of the river on all 
sides far below the keels of the vessels that 
passed to and fro all about, the men worked 
under a pressure that was two or three times 
as great as the fifteen pounds to the square 
inch that every one is accustomed to above 
ground. If the pressure relaxed for a moment 
the lives of the men would be snuffed out 
instantly — drowned by the inrushing waters; 
if the excavation was not even all around, the 
balance of the top-heavy structure would be 
lost, the men killed, and the work destroyed 
entirely. But so carefully is this sort of work 
done that such an accident rarely occurs, and 
the caissons are sunk till they rest on bed-rock 
or permanent, solid ground, far below the 
scouring effect of currents and tides. Then the 
air-chamber is filled with concrete and left to 
support the great towers that pierce the sky 
above the waters. 

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BRIDGE-BUILDING ACHIEVEMENTS 

The pneumatic tube, which is practically a 
steel caisson on a small scale operated in the 
same way, is often used for small towers, and 
many of the steel sky-scrapers of the cities are 
built on foundations of this sort when the 
ground is unstable. 

Foundations of wooden and iron piles, driven 
deep in the ground below the river bottom, 
are perhaps the most common in use. The 
piles are sawed off below the surface of the 
water and a platform built upon them, which 
in turn serves as the foundation for the masonry. 

The great Eads Bridge, which was built across 
the Mississippi at St. Louis, is supported by 
towers the foundations of which are sunk 107 
feet below the ordinary level of the water; at 
this depth the men working in the caissons were 
subjected to a pressure of nearly fifty pounds 
to the square inch, almost equal to that used 
to rim some steam-engines. 

The bridge across the Hudson at Poughkeepsie 
was built on a crib or caisson open at the top 
and sunk by means of a dredge operated from 
above taking out the material from the inside. 
The wonder of this is hard to realise unless it is 
remembered that the steel hands of the dredge 
were worked entirely from above, and the steel 
rope sinews reached down below the surface 
143 



STORIES OF INVENTORS 

more than one hundred feet sometimes; yet 
so cleverly was the work managed that the 
excavation was perfect all around, and the 
crib sank absolutely straight and square. 

It is the fourth department of bridge-building 
that requires the greatest amount not only of 
knowledge but of resourcefulness. In the final 
process of erection conditions are likely to 
arise that were not considered when the plans 
were drawn. 

The chief engineer in charge of the erection 
of a bridge far from civilisation is a little king, 
for it is necessary for him to have the power of an 
absolute monarch over his army of workmen, 
which is often composed of many different races. 

With so many thousand tons of steel and 
stone dumped on the ground at the bridge site, 
with a small force of expert workmen and a 
greater number of unskilled labourers, in spite 
of bad weather, floods, or fearful heat, the 
constructing engineer is expected to finish the 
work within the specified time, and yet it must 
withstand the most exacting tests. 

In the heart of Africa, five hundred miles 
from the coast and the source of supplies, an 
American engineer, aided by twenty-one 
American bridgemen, built twenty-seven via- 
ducts from 128 to 888 feet long within a year. 
144 



BRIDGE-BUILDING ACHIEVEMENTS 

The work was done in half the time and at half 
the cost demanded by the English bidders. 
Mr. Lueder, the chief engineer, tells, in his 
account of the work, of shooting lions from the 
car windows of the temporary railroad, and of 
seeing ostriches try to keep pace with the 
locomotive, but he said little of his difficulties 
with unskilled workmen, foreign customs, and 
almost unspeakable languages. The bridge 
engineer the world over is a man who accom- 
plishes things, and who, furthermore, talks little 
of his achievements. 

Though the work of the bridge builders 
within easy reach of the steel mills and large 
cities is less unusual, it is none the less 
adventurous. 

In 1897, a steel arch bridge was completed 
that was built around the old suspension 
bridge spanning the Niagara River over the 
Whirlpool Rapids. The old suspension bridge 
had been in continuous service since 1855 and 
had outlived its usefulness. It was decided to 
build a new one on the same spot, and yet the 
traffic in the meantime must not be disturbed 
in the least. It would seem that this was 
impossible, but the engineers intrusted with the 
work undertook it with perfect confidence. To 
any one who has seen the rushing, roaring, foam- 

145 



STORIES OF INVENTORS 

ing waters of unknown depth that race so fast 
from the spray-veiled falls that they are heaped 
up in the middle, the mere thought of men 
handling huge girders of steel above the torrent, 
and of standing on frail swinging platforms 
two hundred or more feet above the rapids, 
causes chills to run down the spine; yet the 
work was undertaken without the slightest 
doubt of its successful fulfilment. 

It was manifestly impossible to support the 
new structure from below, and the old bridge 
was carrying about all it could stand, so it was 
necessary to build the new arch, without 
support from underneath, over the foaming 
water of the Niagara rapids two hundred feet 
below. Steel towers were built on either side 
of the gorge, and on them was laid the platform 
of the bridge from the towers nearest to the 
water around and under the old structure. 
The upper works were carried to the solid 
ground on a level with the rim of the gorge 
and there securely anchored with steel rods 
and chains held in masonry. Then from 
either side the arch was built plate by plate 
from above, the heavy sheets of steel being 
handled from a traveller or derrick that was 
pushed out farther and farther over the stream 
as fast as the upper platform was completed. 
146 



BRIDGE-BUILDING ACHIEVEMENTS 

The great mass of metal on both sides of the 
Niagara hung over the stream, and was only 
held from toppling over by the rods and chains 
solidly anchored on shore. Gradually the two 
ends of the uncompleted arch approached each 
other, the amount of work on each part being 
exactly equal, until but a small space was left 
between. The work was so carefully planned 
and exactly executed that the two completed 
halves of the arch did not meet, but when all 
was in readiness the chains on each side, bearing 
as they did the weight of more than 1,000,000 
pounds, were lengthened just enough, and the 
two ends came together, clasping hands over 
the great gorge. Soon the tracks were laid, 
and the new bridge took up the work of the 
old, and then, piece by piece, the old suspension 
bridge, the first of its kind, was demolished and 
taken away. 

Over the Niagara gorge also was built one 
of the first cantilever bridges ever constructed. 
To uphold it, two towers were built close to the 
water's edge on either side, and then from the 
towers to the shores, on a level with the upper 
plateau, the steel fabric, composed of slender 
rods and beams braced to stand the great 
weight it would have to carry, was built on 
false work and secured to solid anchorages on 
147 



STORIES OF INVENTORS 

shore. Then on this, over tracks laid for the 
purpose, a crane was run (the same process 
being carried out on both sides of the river 
simultaneously), and so the span was built over 
the water 239 feet above the seething stream, the 
shore ends balancing the outer sections until the 
two arms met and were joined exactly in the 
middle. This bridge required but eight months to 
build, and was finished in 1883. From the car 
windows hardly any part of the slender structure 
can be seen, and the train seems to be held over 
the foaming torrent by some invisible support, 
yet hundreds of trains have passed over it, the 
winds of many storms have torn at its members, 
heat and cold have tried by expansion and 
contraction to rend it apart, yet the bridge 
is as strong as ever. 

Sometimes bridges are built a span or section 
at a time and placed on great barges, raised 
to just their proper height, and floated down 
to the piers and there secured. 

A railroad bridge across the Schuylkill at 
Philadelphia was judged inadequate for the work 
it had to do, and it was deemed necessary to 
replace it with a new one. The towers it rested 
upon, therefore, were widened, and another, 
stronger bridge was built alongside, the new one 
put upon rollers as was the old, and then between 
148 



BRIDGE-BUILDING ACHIEVEMENTS 

trains the old structure was pushed to one 
side, still resting on the widened piers, and the 
new bridge was pushed into its place, the whole 
operation occupying less than three minutes. 
The new replaced the old between the passing 
of trains that run at four or five-minute intervals. 
The Eads Bridge, which crosses the Mississippi 
at St. Louis, was built on a novel plan. Its 
deep foundations have already been mentioned. 
The great ''Father of -Waters" is notoriously 
fickle; its channel is continually changing, the 
current is swift, and the frequent floods fill up 
and scour out new channels constantly. It was 
necessary, therefore, in order to span the great 
stream, to place as few towers as possible and 
build entirely from above or from the towers 
themselves. It was a bold idea, and many 
predicted its failure, but Captain Eads, the 
great engineer, had the courage of his con- 
victions and carried out his plans successfully. 
From each tower a steel arch was started on 
each side, built of steel tubes braced securely; 
the building on each side of every tower was 
carried on simultaneously, one side of every 
arch balancing the weight on the other side. 
Each section was like a gigantic seesaw, the 
tower acting as the centre support; the ends, 
of course, not swinging up and down. 
149 



STORIES OF INVENTORS 

Gradually the two sections of every arch 
approached each other until they met over 
the turbid water and were permanently con- 
nected. With the completion of the three 
arches, built entirely from the piers supporting 
them, the great stream was spanned. The 
Eads Bridge was practically a double series 
of cantilevers balancing on the towers. Three 
arches were built, the longest being 520 feet long 
and the two shorter ones 502 feet each. 

Every situation that confronts the bridge 
builder requires different handling; at one 
time he may be called upon to construct a 
bridge alongside of a narrow, rocky cleft over 
a rushing stream like the Royal Gorge, Colorado, 
where the track is hung from two great beams 
stretched across the chasm, or he may be 
required to design and construct a viaduct like 
that gossamer structure three hundred and five 
feet high and nearly a half-mile long across the 
Kinzua Creek, in Pennsylvania. Problems 
which have nothing to do with mechanics often 
try his courage and tax his resources, and 
many difficulties though apparently trivial, 
develop into serious troubles. The caste of the 
different native gangs who worked on the 
twenty-seven viaducts built in Central Africa 
is a case in point: each group belonging to the 
150 




BEGINNING AN AMERICAN BRIDGE IN MID-AFRICA 




ANOTHER VIEW OF THE GOKTEIK VIADUCT 



BRIDGE-BUILDING ACHIEVEMENTS 

same caste had to be provided with its own 
quarters, cooking utensils, and camp furniture, 
and dire were the consequences of a mix-up 
during one of the frequent moves made by the 
whole party. 

And so the work of a bridge builder, whether 
it is creating out of a mere jumble of facts and 
figures a giant structure, the shaping of glowing 
metal to exact measurements, the delving in 
the slime under water for firm foundations, or 
the throwing of webs of steel across yawning 
chasms or over roaring streams, is never 
monotonous, is often adventurous, and in many, 
many instances is a great civilising influence. 



151 



SUBMARINES IN WAR AND PEACE 



SUBMARINES IN WAR AND 
PEACE 

DURING the early part of the Spanish- 
American war a fleet of vessels patrolled 
the Atlantic coast from Florida to Maine. 
The Spanish Admiral Cervera had left the 
home waters with his fleet of cruisers and 
torpedo-boats and no one knew where they 
were. The lookouts on all the vessels were 
ordered to keep a sharp watch for strange 
ships, and especially for those having a warlike 
appearance. All the newspapers and letters 
received on board the different cruisers of the 
patrol fleet told of the anxiety felt in the coast 
towns and of the fear that the Spanish ships 
would appear suddenly and begin a bombard- 
ment. To add to the excitement and expecta- 
tion, especially of the green crews, the men 
were frequently called out of their comfortable 
hammocks in the middle of the night, and sent 
to their stations at guns and ammunition maga- 
zines, just as if a battle was imminent; all this 
was for the purpose of familiarising the crews 
i55 



STORIES OF INVENTORS 

with their duties under war conditions, though 
no enlisted man knew whether he was called to 
quarters to fight or for drill. 

These were the conditions, then, when one 
bright Sunday the crew of an auxiliary cruiser 
were very busy cleaning ship — a very thorough 
and absorbing business. While the men were 
in the thick of the scrubbing, one of the crew 
stood up to straighten his back, and looked 
out through an open port in the vessel's side. 
As he looked he caught a glimpse of a low, 
black craft, hardly five hundred yards off, 
coming straight for the cruiser. The water 
foamed at her bows and the black smoke 
poured out of her funnels, streaking behind her 
a long, sinister cloud. It was one of those 
venomous little torpedo-boats, and she was 
apparently rushing in at top speed to get 
within easy range of the large warship. 

"A torpedo-boat is headed straight for us," 
cried the man at the port, and at the same 
moment came the call for general quarters. 

As the men ran to their stations the word 
was passed from one to the other, "A Spanish 
torpedo-boat is headed for us." 

With haste born of desperation the crew 
worked to get ready for action, and when all 
was ready, each man in his place, guns loaded, 
156 



SUBMARINES IN WAR AND PEACE 

firing lanyards in hand, gun-trainers at the 
wheels, all was still — no command to fire was 
given. 

From the signal-boys to the firemen in the 
stokehole — for news travels fast aboard ship 
— all were expecting the muffled report and 
the rending, tearing explosion of a torpedo 
under the ship's bottom. The terrible power 
of the torpedo was known to all, and the dread 
that filled the hearts of that waiting crew could 
not be put into words. 

Of course it was a false alarm. The torpedo- 
boat flew the Stars and Stripes, but the heavy 
smoke concealed it, and the officers, perceiving 
the opportunities for testing the men, let it be 
believed that a boat belonging to the enemy 
was bearing down on them. 

The crews of vessels engaged in future wars 
will have, not only swifter, surer torpedo-boats 
to menace them, but even more dreadful foes. 

The conning towers of the submarines show 
but a foot or two above the surface — a sinister 
black spot on the water, like the dorsal fin of a 
shark, that suggests but does not reveal the 
cruel power below; for an instant the knob 
lingers above the surface while the steersman 
gets his bearings, and then it sinks in a swirling 
eddy, leaving no mark showing in what direction 
157 



STORIES OF INVENTORS 

it has travelled. Then the crew of the exposed 
warship wait and wonder with a sickening cold 
fear in their hearts how soon the crash will 
come, and pray that the deadly submarine 
torpedo will miss its mark. 

Submarine torpedo-boats are actual, practical 
working vessels to-day, and already they have 
to be considered in the naval plans for attack 
and defense. 

Though the importance of submarines in 
warfare, and especially as a weapon of defense, 
is beginning to be thoroughly recognised, it 
took a long time to arouse the interest of naval 
men and the public generally sufficient to give 
the inventors the support they needed. 

Americans once had within their grasp the 
means to blow some of their enemies' ships out 
of the water, but they did not realise it, as will 
be shown in the following, and for a hundred 
years the progress in this direction was hindered. 

It was during the American Revolution that 
a man went below the surface of the waters of 
New York Harbour in a submarine boat just 
big enough to hold him, and in the darkness 
and gloom of the under-water world propelled 
his turtle-like craft toward the British ships 
anchored in mid-stream. On the outside shell 
of the craft rested a magazine with a heavy 

158 



SUBMARINES IN WAR AND PEACE 

charge of gunpowder which the submarine 
navigator intended to screw fast to the bottom 
of a fifty-gun British man-of-war, and which 
was to be exploded by a time-fuse after he had 
got well out of harm's way. 

Slowly and with infinite labour this first 
submarine navigator worked his way through 
the water in the first successful under-water 
boat, the crank-handle of the propelling screw 
in front of him, the helm at his side, and the 
crank-handle of the screw that raised or lowered 
the craft just above and in front. No other 
man had made a like voyage; he had little 
experience to guide him, and he lacked the 
confidence that a well-tried device assures; he 
was alone in a tiny vessel with but half an hour's 
supply of air, a great box of gunpowder over 
him, and a hostile fleet all around. It was a 
perilous position and he felt it. With his head 
in the little conning tower he was able to get 
a glimpse of the ship he was bent on destroying, 
as from time to time he raised his little craft 
to get his bearings. At last he reached his all- 
unsuspecting quarry and, sinking under the 
keel, tried to attach the torpedo. There in the 
darkness of the depths of North River this 
unnamed hero, in the first practical submarine 
boat, worked to make the first torpedo fast to 
159 



STORIES OF INVENTORS 

the bottom of the enemy's ship, but a little 
iron plate or bolt holding the rudder in place 
made all the difference between a failure that 
few people ever heard of and a great achieve- 
ment that would have made the inventor of the 
boat, David Bushnell, famous everywhere, and 
the navigator a great hero. The little iron plate, 
however, prevented the screw from taking 
hold, the tide carried the submarine past, and 
the chance was lost. 

David Bushnell was too far ahead of his 
time, his invention was not appreciated, and 
the failure of his first attempt prevented him 
from getting the support he needed to demon- 
strate the usefulness of his under- water craft. 
The piece of iron in the keel of the British war- 
ship probably put back development of sub- 
marine boats many years, for Bushnell's boat 
contained many of the principles upon which 
the successful under-water craft of the present 
time are built. 

One hundred and twenty-five years after 
the subsurface voyage described above, a steel 
boat, built like a whale but with a prow coming 
to a point, manned by a crew of six, travelling at 
an average rate of eight knots an hour, armed 
with five Whitehead torpedoes, and designed 
and built by Americans, passed directly over 
1 60 



SUBMARINES IN WAR AND PEACE 

the spot where the first submarine boat attacked 
the British fleet. 

The Holland boat Fulton had already travelled 
the length of Long Island Sound, diving at 
intervals, before reaching New York, and was 
on her way to the Delaware Capes. 

She was the invention of John P. Holland, 
and the result of twenty-five years of experi- 
menting, nine experimental boats having been 
built before this persistent and courageous 
inventor produced a craft that came up to his 
ideals. The cruise of the Fulton was like a 
march of triumph, and proved beyond a doubt 
that the Holland submarines were practical, 
sea-going craft. 

At the eastern end of Long Island the captain 
and crew, six men in all, one by one entered the 
Fulton through the round hatch in the conning 
tower that projected about two feet above the 
back of the fish-like vessel. Each man had 
his own particular place aboard and definite 
duties to perform, so there was no need to move 
about much, nor was there much room left by 
the gasoline motor, the electric motor, storage 
batteries, air-compressor, and air ballast and 
gasoline tanks, and the Whitehead torpedoes. 
The captain stood up inside of the conning 
tower, with his eyes on a level with the little 
161 



STORIES OF INVENTORS 

thick glass windows, and in front of him was 
the wheel connecting with the rudder that 
steered the craft right and left; almost at his 
feet was stationed the man who controlled the 
diving-rudders; farther aft was the engineer, 
all ready for the word to start his motor; 
another man controlled the ballast tanks, and 
another watched the electric motor and batteries. 

With a clang the lid-like hatch to the conning 
tower was closed and clamped fast in its rubber 
setting, the gasoline engine began its rapid 
phut -phut, and the submarine boat began its 
long journey down Long Island Sound. The 
boat started in with her deck awash — that is, 
with two or three feet freeboard or of deck 
above the water-line. In this condition she 
could travel as long as her supply of gasoline 
held out — her tanks holding enough to drive 
her 560 knots at the speed of six knots an hour, 
when in the semi-awash condition; the lower 
she sank the greater the surface exposed to the 
friction of the water and the greater power 
expended to attain a given speed. 

As the vessel jogged along, with a good part 
of her deck showing above the waves, her air 
ventilators were open and the burnt gas of the 
engine was exhausted right out into the open; 
the air was as pure as in the cabin of an ordinary 
162 



SUBMARINES IN WAR AND PEACE 

ship. Besides the work of propelling the boat, 
the engine being geared to the electric motor 
made it revolve, so turning it into a dynamo 
that created electricity and filled up the storage 
batteries. 

From time to time, as this whale-like ship 
plowed the waters of the Sound, a big wave 
would flow entirely over her, and the captain 
would be looking right into the foaming crest. 
The boat was built for under- water going, so 
little daylight penetrated the interior through 
the few small deadlights, or round, heavy glass 
windows, but electric incandescent bulbs fed 
by current from the storage batteries lit the 
interior brilliantly. 

The boat had not proceeded far when the 
captain ordered the crew to prepare to dive, 
and immediately the engine was shut down 
and the clutch connecting its shaft with the 
electric apparatus thrown off and another 
connecting the electric motor with the pro- 
peller thrown in; a switch was then turned and 
the current from the storage batteries set the 
motor and propeller spinning. While this was 
being done another man was letting water 
into her ballast tanks to reduce her buoyancy. 
When all but the conning tower was submerged 
the captain looked at the compass to see how 
163 



STORIES OF INVENTORS 

she was heading, noted that no vessels were 
near enough to make a submarine collision 
likely, and gave the word to the man at his feet 
to dive twenty feet. Then a strange thing hap- 
pened. The diving-helmsman gave a twist to 
the wheel that connected with the horizontal 
rudders aft of the propeller, and immediately the 
boat slanted downward at an angle of ten 
degrees ; the water rose about the conning tower 
until the little windows were level with the sur- 
face, and then they were covered, and the 
captain looked into solid water that was still 
turned yellowish-green by the light of the sun; 
then swiftly descending, he saw but the faintest 
gleam of green light coming through twenty 
feet of water. The Fulton, with six men in 
her, was speeding along at five knots an hour 
twenty feet below the shining waters of the 
Sound. 

The diving-helmsman kept his eye on a gauge 
in front of him that measured the pressure of 
water at the varying depths, but the dial was so 
marked that it told him just how many feet the 
Fulton was below the surface. Another device 
showed whether the boat was on an even keel 
or, if not exactly, how many degrees she slanted 
up or down. 

With twenty feet of salt water above her 
164 



SUBMARINES IN WAR AND PEACE 

and as much below, this mechanical whale 
cruised along with her human freight as com- 
fortable as they would have been in the same 
space ashore. The vessel contained sufficient 
air to last them several hours, and when it 
became vitiated there were always the tanks 
of compressed air ready to be drawn upon. 

Except for the hum of the motor and the 
slight clank of the steering-gear, all was silent; 
none of the noises of the outer world penetrated 
the watery depths ; neither the slap of the waves, 
the whir of the breeze, the hiss of steam, nor 
rattle of rigging accompanied the progress of 
this submarine craft. As silently as a fish, as 
far as the outer world was concerned, the 
Fulton crept through the submarine darkness. 
If an enemy's ship was near it would be an 
easy thing to discharge one of the five White- 
head torpedoes she carried and get out of harm's 
way before it struck the bottom of the ship 
and exploded. 

In the tube which opened at the very tip end 
of the nose of the craft lay a Whitehead (or 
automobile) torpedo, which when properly set 
and ejected by compressed air propelled itself 
at a predetermined depth at a speed of thirty 
knots an hour until it struck the object it was 
aimed at or its compressed air power gave out 

165 



STORIES OF INVENTORS 

The seven Holland boats built for the United 
States Navy, of which the Fulton is a prototype, 
carry five of these torpedoes, one in the tube and 
two on either side of the hold, and each boat is 
also provided with one compensating tank for 
each torpedo, so that when one or all are fired 
their weight may be compensated by rilling 
the tanks with water so that the trim of the 
vessel will be kept the same and her stability 
retained. 

The Fulton, however, was bent on a peaceful 
errand, and carried dummy torpedoes instead 
of the deadly engines of destruction that the 
man-o'-war's man dreads. 

"Dive thirty," ordered the captain, at the 
same time giving his wheel a twist to direct the 
vessel's course according to the pointing finger 
of the compass. 

"Dive thirty, sir," repeated the steersman 
below, and with a slight twist of his gear the 
horizontal rudders turned and the submarine 
inclined downward; the level-indicator showed 
a slight slant and the depth-gauge hand turned 
slowly round — twenty-two, twenty-five, twenty- 
eight, then thirty feet, when the helmsman 
turned his wheel back a little and the vessel 
forged ahead on a level keel. 

At thirty feet below the surface the little 
166 



SUBMARINES IN WAR AND PEACE 

craft, built like a cigar on purpose to stand 
a tremendous squeeze, was subjected to a pres- 
sure of 2,160 pounds to the square foot. To 
realise this pressure it will be necessary to 
think of a slab of iron a foot square and weigh- 
ing 2,160 pounds pressing on every foot of the 
outer surface of the craft. Of course, the 
squeeze is exerted on all sides of the submarine 
boats when fully submerged, just as every one 
is subjected to an -atmospheric pressure of 
fifteen pounds to the square inch on every 
inch of his body. 

The Fulton and other submarine boats are so 
strongly built and thoroughly braced that they 
could stand an even greater pressure without 
damage. 

When the commander of the Fulton ordered 
his vessel to the surface, the diving-steersman 
simply reversed his rudders so that they turned 
upward, and the propeller, aided by the natural 
buoyancy of the boat, simply pushed her to 
the surface. The Holland boats have a reserve 
buoyancy, so that if anything should happen 
to the machinery they would rise unaided to the 
surface. 

Compressed air was turned into the ballast 
tanks, the water forced out so that the boat's 
buoyancy was increased, and she floated in a 
167 



STORIES OF INVENTORS 

semi-awash, or light, condition. The engineer 
turned off the current from the storage bat- 
teries, threw off the motor from the propeller 
shaft, and connected the gasoline engine, started 
it up, and inside of five minutes from the time 
the Fulton was navigating the waters of the 
Sound at a depth of thirty feet she was sailing 
along on the surface like any other gasoline 
craft. 

And so the ninety-mile journey down Long 
Island Sound, partly under water, partly on 
the surface, to New York, was completed. The 
greater voyage to the Delaware Capes followed, 
and at all times the little sixty-three-foot 
boat that was but eleven feet in diameter at 
her greatest girth carried her crew and equip- 
ment with perfect safety and without the least 
inconvenience. 

Such a vessel, small in size but great in 
destructive power, is a force to be reckoned 
with by the most powerful battle-ship. No 
defense has yet been devised that will ward off 
the deadly sting of the submarine's torpedo, 
delivered as it is from beneath, out of the sight 
and hearing of the doomed ships' crews, and 
exploded against a portion of the hull that 
cannot be adequately protected by armour. 

Though the conning-dome of a submarine 
168 



I 




SUBMARINES IN WAR AND PEACE 

presents a very small target, its appearance 
above water shows her position and gives 
warning of her approach. To avoid this tell- 
tale an instrument called a periscope has been 
invented, which looks like a bottle on the end 
of a tube; this has lenses and mirrors that 
reflect into the interior of the submarine what- 
ever shows above water. The bottle part pro- 
jects above, while the tube penetrates the 
interior. 

The very unexpectedness of the submarine's 
attack, the mere knowledge that they are in 
the vicinity of a fleet and may launch their 
deadly missiles at any time, is enough to break 
down the nerves of the strongest and eventually 
throw into a panic the bravest crew. 

That the crews of the warships will have to 
undergo the strain of submarine attack in the 
next naval war is almost sure. All the great 
nations of the world have built fleets of sub- 
marines or are preparing to do so. 

In the development of under-water fighting- 
craft France leads, as she has the largest fleet 
and was the first to encourage the designing 
and building of them. But it was David 
Bushnell that invented and built the first 
practical working submarine boat, and in point 
of efficiency and practical working under service 
169 



STORIES OF INVENTORS 

conditions in actual readiness for hostile action 
the American boats excel to-day. 

A Peaceful Submarine 

Under the green sea, in the total darkness 
of the great depths and the yellowish-green 
of the shallows of the oceans, with the sea- 
weeds waving their fronds about their barnacle- 
encrusted timbers and the creatures of the 
deep playing in and about the decks and 
rotted rigging, lie hundreds of wrecks. Many 
a splendid ship with a valuable cargo has gone 
down off a dangerous coast; many a hoard of 
gold or silver, gathered with infinite pains from 
the far corners of the earth, lies intact in de- 
caying strong boxes on the bottom of the sea. 

To recover the treasures of the deep, expedi- 
tions have been organised, ships have sailed, 
divers have descended, and crews have braved 
great dangers. Many great wrecking companies 
have been formed which accomplish wonders 
in the saving of wrecked vessels and cargoes. 
But in certain places all the time and at others 
part of the time, wreckers have had to leave 
valuable wrecks a prey to the merciless sea 
because the ocean is too angry and the waves 
too high to permit of the safe handling of 
the air-hose and life-line of the divers who 
170 



SUBMARINES IN WAR AND PEACE 

are depended upon to do all the under-water 
work, rigging of hoisting-tackle, placing of 
buoys, etc. Indeed, it is often impossible for 
a vessel to stay in one place long enough to 
accomplish anything, or, in fact, to venture 
to the spot at all. 

It was an American boy who, after reading 
Jules Verne's "Twenty Thousand Leagues 
Under the Sea," said to himself, "Why not?" 
and from that time set out to put into practice 
what the French writer had imagined. 

Simon Lake set to work to invent a way by 
which a wrecked vessel or a precious cargo 
could be got at from below the surface. Though 
the waves may be tossing their whitecaps high 
in air and the strong wind may turn the watery 
plain into rolling hills of angry seas, the water 
twenty or thirty feet below hardly feels any 
surface motion. So he set to work to build a 
vessel that should be able to sail on the surface 
or travel on the bottom, and provide a shelter 
from which divers could go at will, undisturbed 
by the most tempestuous sea. People laughed 
at his idea, and so he found great difficulty in 
getting enough capital to carry out his plan, 
and his first boat, built largely with his own 
hands, had little in its appearance to inspire 
confidence in his scheme. Built of wood, 
171 



STORIES OF INVENTORS 

fourteen feet long and five feet deep, fitted 
with three wheels, Argonaut Junior looked 
not unlike a large go-cart such as boys 
make out of a soap-box and a set of wooden 
wheels. The boat, however, made actual trips, 
navigated by its inventor, proving that his 
plan was feasible. Argonaut Junior, having 
6erved its purpose, was abandoned, and now 
lies neglected on one of the beaches of New 
York Bay. 

The Argonaut, Mr. Lake's second vessel, had 
the regular submarine look, except that she 
was equipped with two great, rough tread- 
wheels forward, and to the underside of her 
rudder was pivoted another. She was really an 
under-water tricycle, a diving-bell, a wrecking- 
craft, and a surface gasoline-boat all rolled into 
one. When floating on the surface she looked 
not unlike an ordinary sailing craft; two long 
spars, each about thirty feet above the deck, 
forming the letter A — these were the pipes that 
admitted fresh air and discharged the burnt 
gases of the gasoline motor and the vitiated air 
that had been breathed. A low deck gave a 
ship-shape appearance when floating, but below 
she was shaped like a very fat cigar. Under 
the deck and outside of the hull proper were 
placed her gasoline tanks, safe from any possible 
172 



SUBMARINES IN WAR AND PEACE 

danger of ignition from the interior. From 
her nose protruded a spar that looked like a 
bowsprit but which was in reality a derrick; 
below the derrick-boom were several glazed 
openings that resembled eyes and a mouth: 
these were the lookout windows for the under- 
water observer and the submarine searchlight. 
The Argonaut was built to run on the surface 
or on the bottom; she was not designed to 
navigate half-way between. When in search 
of a wreck or made ready for a cruise along the 
bottom, the trap door or hatch in her turret-like 
pilot house was tightly closed; the water was 
let into her ballast tanks, and two heavy weights 
to which were attached strong cables that 
could be wound or unwound from the inside 
were lowered from their recesses in the fore and 
after part of the keel of the boat to the bottom ; 
then the motor was started connected to the 
winding mechanism, and, the buoyancy of the 
boat being greatly reduced, she was drawn to 
the bottom by the winding of the anchor cables. 
As she sank, more and more water was taken 
into her tanks until she weighed slightly more 
than the water she displaced. When her 
wheels rested on the bottom her anchor-weights 
were pulled completely into their wells, so that 
they would not interfere with her movements. 

*73 



STORIES OF INVENTORS 

Then the strange submarine vehicle began 
her voyage on the bottom of the bay or ocean. 
Since the pipes projected above the surface 
plenty of fresh air was admitted, and it was 
quite as easy to run the gasoline engine under 
water as on the surface. In the turrets, as 
far removed as possible from the magnetic 
influences of the steel hull, the compass was 
placed, and an ingeniously arranged mirror 
reflected its readings down below where the 
steersman could see it conveniently. Aft of 
the steering-wheel was the gasoline motor, 
connected with the propeller-shaft and also 
with the driving-wheels; it was so arranged 
that either could be thrown out of gear or 
both operated at once. She was equipped with 
depth-gauges showing the distance below the 
surface, and another device showing the trim of 
the vessel; compressed-air tanks, propelling and 
pumping machinery, an air-compressor and 
dynamo which supplied the current to light 
the ship and also for the searchlight which 
illuminated the under-water pathway — all this 
apparatus left but little room in the hold, but 
it was all so carefully planned that not an inch 
was wasted, and space was still left for her crew 
of three or four to work, eat, and even sleep, 
below the waves. 

174 



SUBMARINES IN WAR AND PEACE 

Forward of the main space of the boat were 
the diving and lookout compartments, which 
really were the most important parts of the 
boat, as far as her wrecking ability was con- 
cerned. By means of a trap door in the diving 
compartment through the bottom of the boat 
a man fitted with a diving-suit could go out 
and explore a wreck or examine the bottom 
almost as easily as a man goes out of his front 
door to call for an "extra." It will be thought 
at once, "But the water will rush in when the 
trap door is opened." This is prevented by 
filling the diving compartment, which is sepa- 
rated from the main part of the ship by steel 
walls, with compressed air of sufficient pressure 
to keep the water from coming in — that is, the 
pressure of water from without equals the 
presure of air from within and neither element 
can pass into the other's domain. 

An air-lock separates the diver's section from 
the main hold so that it is possible to pass from 
one to the other while the entrance to the sea 
is still open. A person entering the lock from 
the large room first closes the door between 
and then gradually admits the compressed air 
until the pressure is the same as in the diving 
compartment, when the door into it may be 
safely opened. When returning, this operation 
175 



STORIES OF INVENTORS 

is simply reversed. The lookout stands 
forward of the diver's space. When the 
Argonaut rolls along the bottom, round 
openings protected with heavy glass permit 
the lookout to follow the beam of light thrown 
by the searchlight and see dimly any sizable 
obstruction. When the diving compartment 
is in use the man on lookout duty uses a 
portable telephone to tell his shipmates in the 
main room what is happening out in the wet, 
and by the same means the reports of the 
diver can be communicated without opening 
the air-lock. 

This little ship (thirty-six feet long) has done 
wonderful things. She has cruised over the 
bottom of Chesapeake Bay, New York Bay, 
Hampton Roads, and the Atlantic Ocean, her 
driving-wheels propelling her when the bottom 
was hard, and her screw when the oozy con- 
dition of the submarine road made her spiked 
wheels useless except to steer with. Her 
passengers have been able to examine the bottom 
under twenty feet of water (without wetting 
their feet), through the trap door, with the aid 
7>i an electric light let down into the clear 
depths. Telephone messages have been sent 
from the bottom of Baltimore Harbour to the 
top of the New York World building, telling of 
176 



SUBMARINES IN WAR AND PEACE 

the conditions there in contrast to the New 
York editor's aerial perch. Cables have been 
picked up and examined without dredging — a 
hook lowered through the trap door being all 
that was necessary. Wrecks have been exam- 
ined and valuables recovered. 

Although the Argonaut travelled over 2,000 
miles under water and on the surface, propelled 
by her own power, her inventor was not satisfied 
with her. He cut her in two, therefore, and 
added a section to her, making her sixty-six 
feet long; this allowed more comfortable quar- 
ters for her crew, space for larger engines, com- 
pressors, etc. 

It was off Bridgeport, Connecticut, that t-he 
new Argonaut did her first practical wrecking. 
A barge loaded with coal had sunk in a gale 
and could not be located with the ordinary 
means. The Argonaut, however, with the aid 
of a device called the " wreck-detector," also 
invented by Mr. Lake, speedily found it, sank 
near it, and also submerged a new kind of 
freight-boat built for the purpose by the 
inventor. A diver quickly explored the hulk, 
opened the hatches of the freight -boat, which 
was cigar-shaped like the Argonaut and supplied 
with wheels so it could be drawn over the bot- 
tom, and placed the suction-tube in position 
177 



STORIES OF INVENTORS 

Seven minutes later eight tons of coal had been 
transferred from the wreck to the submarine 
freight-boat. The hatches were then closed 
and compressed air admitted, forcing out the 
water, and five minutes later the freight-boat 
was floating on the surface with eight tons of 
coal from a wreck which could not even be 
located by the ordinary means. 

It is possible that in the future these modern 
"argonauts" will be seeking the golden fleeces 
of the sea in wrecks, in golden sands like the 
beaches of Nome, and that these amphibious 
boats will be ready along all the dangerous 
coasts to rush to the rescue of noble ships and 
wrest them from the clutches of the cruel sea. 

Mr. Lake has also designed and built a sub- 
marine torpedo-boat that will travel on the 
surface, under the waves, or on the bottom; 
provided with both gasoline and electric power, 
and, fitted with torpedo discharge tubes, she 
will be able to throw a submarine torpedo; 
her diver could attach a charge of dynamite to 
the keel of an anchored warship, or she could 
do great damage by hooking up cables through 
her diver's trap door and cutting them, and 
by setting adrift anchored torpedoes and sub- 
marine mines. 

Thus have Jules Verne's imaginings come 
178 



SUBMARINBIS IN WAR AND PEACE 

true, and the dream Nautilus, whose adventures 
so many of us have breathlessly followed, has 
been succeeded by actual "Hollands" and 
practical "Argonauts" designed by American 
inventors and manned by American crews. 



179 



LONG-DISTANCE TELEPHONY 



LONG-DISTANCE TELEPHONY 

What Happens When You Talk into a 
Telephone Receiver 

TN Omaha, Nebraska, half-way across the 
■*■ continent and about forty hours from 
Boston by fast train, a man sits comfortably 
in his office chair and, with no more exertion 
than is required to lift a portable receiver off 
his desk, talks every day to his representative 
in the chief New England city. The man in 
Boston hears his chief's voice and can recognise 
the peculiarities in it just as if he stood in the 
same room with him. The man in Nebraska, 
speaking in an ordinary conversational tone, 
can be heard perfectly well in Boston, 1,400 
miles away. 

This is the longest talk on record — that is, 
it is the longest continuous telephone line in 
steady and constant use, though the human 
voice has been carried even greater distances 
with the aid of this wonderful instrument. 

The telephone is so common that no one 

183 



STORIES OF INVENTORS 

stops to consider the wonder of it, and not one 
person in a hundred can tell how it works. 

At this time, when the telephone is as neces- 
sary as pen and ink, it is hard to realise a time 
when men could not speak to one another 
from a distance, yet a little more than a quarter 
of a century ago the genius who invented it 
first conceived the great idea. 

Sometimes an inventor is a prophet: he sees 
in advance how his idea, perfected and in 
universal use, will change things, establish 
new manners and customs, new laws and new 
methods, Alexander Graham Bell was one 
of these prophetic inventors — the telephone 
was his invention, not his discovery. He first 
got the idea and then sought a way to make 
it practical. If you put yourself in his place, 
forget what has been accomplished, and put 
out of mind how the voice is transmitted from 
place to place by the slender wire, it would be 
impossible even then to realise how much in 
the dark Professor Bell was in 1874. 

The human speaking voice is full of changes; 
unlike the notes from a musical instrument, 
there is no uniformity in it ; the rise and fall 
of inflection, the varying sound of the vowels 
and consonants, the combinations of words 
and syllables — each produces a different vibra- 
184 








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LONG-DISTANCE TELEPHONY 

tion and different tone. To devise an instru- 
ment that would receive all these varying 
tones and inflections and change them into 
some other form of energy so that they could 
be passed over a wire, and then change them 
back to their original form, reproducing each 
sound and every peculiarity of the voice of the 
speaker in the ear of the hearer, was the task 
that Professor Bell set for himself. Just as 
you would sit down to add up a big column of 
figures, knowing that sooner or later you would 
get the correct answer, so he set himself to 
work out this problem in invention. The 
result of his study and determination is the 
telephones we use to-day. Many improve- 
ments have been invented by other men — 
Berliner, Edison, Blake, and others — but the 
idea and the working out of the principle is 
due to Professor Bell. 

Every telephone receiver and transmitter 
has a mouth- and ear-piece to receive or throw 
out the sound, a thin round sheet of lacquered 
metal — called a diaphragm, and an electro- 
magnet; together they reproduce human 
speech. An electric current from a battery 
or from the central station flows continuously 
through the wires wound round the electro- 
magnet in receiving and transmitting instru- 

185 



STORIES OF INVENTORS 

ments, so when you speak into the black mouth- 
piece of the wall or desk receiver the vibrations 
strike against the thin sheet-iron diaphragm 
at the small end of the mouthpiece; the sound 
waves of the voice make it vibrate to a greater 
or less degree; the diaphragm is placed so that 
the core of the eclectromagnet is close to it, 
and as it vibrates the iron in it produces undula- 
tions (by induction) in the current which is 
flowing through the wires wound round the 
soft iron centre of the magnet. The wires of 
the coil are connected with the lines that go to 
the receiving telephone, so that this undulating 
current, coiling round the core of the magnet 
in the receiver, attracts and repels the iron of 
the diaphragm in it, and it vibrates just as 
the transmitter diaphragm did when spoken 
into; the undulating current is translated 
by it into words and sentences that have all 
the peculiarities of the original. And so when 
speaking into a telephone your voice is converted 
into undulations or waves in an electric current 
conveyed with incredible swiftness to the 
receiving instrument, and these are translated 
back into the vibrations that produce speech. 
This is really what takes place when you talk 
over a toy telephone made by a string stretched 
between the two tin mouth-pieces held at oppo- 
186 



LONG-DISTANCE TELEPHONY 

site sides of the room, with the difference 
that in the telephone the vibrations are carried 
electrically, while the toy carries them mechanic- 
ally and not nearly so perfectly. 

For once the world realised immediately the 
importance of a revolutionising invention, and 
telephone stations soon began to be established 
in the large cities. Quicker than the telegraph, 
for there was no need of an operator to translate 
the message, and more accurate, for if spoken 
clearly the words could be as clearly understood, 
the telephone service spread rapidly. Lines 
stretched farther and farther out from the 
central stations in the cities as improvements 
were invented, until the outlying wires of one 
town reached the outstretched lines of another, 
and then communication between town and 
town was established. Then two distant cities 
talked to each other through an intermediate 
town, and long-distance telephony was es- 
tablished. To-day special lines are built to 
carry long-distance messages from one great 
city to another, and these direct lines are used 
entirely except when storms break through or 
the rush of business makes the roundabout 
route through intermediate cities necessary. 

As the nerves reaching from your finger-tips, 
from your ears, your eyes, and every portion 

i8 7 



STORIES OF INVENTORS 

of your body come to a focus in your brain 
and carry information to it about the things 
you taste, see, hear, feel, and smell, so the 
wires of a telephone system come together at 
the central station. And as it is necessary for 
your right hand to communicate with your 
left through your brain, so it is necessary for 
one telephone subscriber to connect through 
the central station with another subscriber. 

The telephone has become a necessity of 
modern life, so that if through some means 
all the systems were destroyed business would 
be, for a time at least, paralysed. It is the 
perfection of the devices for connecting one 
subscriber with another, and for despatching the 
vast number of messages and calls at " central, " 
that make modern telephony possible. 

To handle the great number of spoken 
messages that are sent over the telephone wires 
of a great city it is necessary to divide the 
territory into districts, which vary in size 
according to the number of subscribers in them. 
Where the telephones are thickly installed the 
districts are smaller than in sections that are 
more sparsely settled. 

Then all the telephone wires of a certain 
district converge at a central station, and 
each pair of wires is connected with its 
188 



LONG-DISTANCE TELEPHONY 

own particular switch at the switchboard of 
the station. That is simple enough; but 
when you come to consider that every sub- 
scriber must be so connected that he can be 
put into communication with every other 
subscriber, not only in his own section but also 
with every subscriber throughout the city, it 
will be seen that the switchboard at central is 
as marvellous as it is complicated. Some of 
the busy stations in New York have to take 
care of 6,000 or more subscribers and 10,000 tele- 
phone instruments, while the city proper is 
criss-crossed with more than 60,000 lines bear- 
ing messages from more than 100,000 " 'phones." 
Just think of the babel entering the branch cen- 
trals that has to be straightened out and each 
separate series of voice undulations sent on its 
proper way, to be translated into speech again 
and poured into the proper ear. It is no wonder, 
then, that it has been found necessary to es- 
tablish a school for telephone girls where they 
can be taught how to untangle the snarl and 
handle the vast, complicated system. In these 
schools the operators go through a regular 
course lasting a month. They listen to lectures 
and work out the instructions given them at a 
practice switchboard that is exactly like the 
service switchboard, except that the wires do 
189 



STORIES OF INVENTORS 

not go outside of the building, but connect 
with the instructor's desk; the instructor calls 
up the pupils and sends messages in just the 
same way that the subscribers call "central" in 
the regular service. 

At the terminal station of a great railroad, 
in the midst of a network of shining rails, 
stands the switchman's tower. By means of 
steel levers the man in his tower can throw 
his different switches and open one track to 
a train and close another; by means of various 
signals the switchman can tell if any given line 
is clear or if his levers do their work properly. 
A telephone system may be likened, in a 
measure, to a complicated railroad line: the 
trunk wires to subscribers are like the tracks 
of the railroad, and the central station may be 
compared to the switch tower, while the 
central operators are like the switchmen. It 
is the central girls' business to see that con- 
nections are made quickly and correctly, that no 
lines are tied up unnecessarily, that messages 
are properly charged to the right persons, 
that in case of a break in a line the messages 
are switched round the trouble, and above all 
that there shall be no delay. 

When you take your receiver off the hook 
a tiny electric bulb glows opposite the brass - 
190 




"CENTRAL" MAKING CONNECTIONS 
The front of a small section of a central-station switchboard. Each dot 
on the face of the blackboard is a subscriber's connection The 
cords connect one subscriber with another. The switches throwing 
in the operator's "'phone," and the pilot lamps showing when a 
subscriber wishes a connection, are set in the table or shelf before her. 



LONG-DISTANCE TELEPHONY 

lined hole that is marked with your number on 
the switchboard of your central, and the tele- 
phone girl knows that you are ready to send in 
a call — the flash of the little light is a signal to 
her that you want to be connected with some 
other subscriber. Whereupon, she inserts in 
your connection a brass plug to which a flexi- 
ble wire is attached, and then opens a little 
lever which connects her with your circuit. 
Then she speaks into a kind of inverted 
horn which projects from a transmitter that 
hangs round her neck and asks: "Number, 
please?" You answer with the number, which 
she hears through the receiver strapped to her 
head and ear. After repeating the number the 
"hello" girl proceeds to make the connection. 
If the number required is in the same section 
of the city she simply reaches for the hole or con- 
nection which corresponds with it, with another 
brass plug, the twin of the one that is already 
inserted in your connection, and touches the 
brass lining with the plug. All the connections 
to each central station are so arranged and 
duplicated that they are within the reach of 
each operator. If the line is already "busy" 
a slight buzz is heard, not only by "central," 
but by the subscriber also if he listens ; "central " 
notifies and then disconnects you. If the line 
191 



STORIES OF INVENTORS 

is clear the twin plug is thrust into the opening, 
and at the same time "central" presses a button, 
which either rings a bell or causes a drop to 
fall in the private exchange station of the party 
you wish to talk to. The moment the new con- 
nection is made and the party you wish to talk 
to takes off the receiver from his hook, a second 
light glows beside yours, and continues to glow 
as long as the receiver remains off. The two 
little lamps are a signal to "central" that the 
connection is properly made and she can then 
attend to some other call. When your con- 
versation is finished and your receivers are 
hung up the little lights go out. That signals 
"central" again, and she withdraws the plug 
from both holes and pushes another button, 
which connects with a meter made like a bicycle 
cyclometer. This little instrument records your 
call (a meter is provided for each subscriber) 
and at the same time lights the two tiny lamps 
again — a signal to the inspector, if one happens 
to be watching, that the call is properly recorded. 
All this takes long to read, but it is done in 
the twinkling of an eye. "Central's" hands 
are both free, and by long practice and close 
attention she is able to make and break con- 
nections with marvellous rapidity, it being 
quite an ordinary thing for an operator in a 
192 



LONG-DISTANCE TELEPHONY 

busy section to make ten connections a minute, 
while in an emergency this rate is greatly 
increased. 

The call of one subscriber for another number 
in the same section, as described above — for 
instance, the call of 4341 Eighteenth Street for 
2165 Eighteenth Street — is the easiest connec- 
tion that "central" has to make. 

As it is impossible for each branch exchange 
to be connected with every individual line in 
a great city, when a subscriber of one exchange 
wishes to talk with a subscriber of another, two 
central operators are required to make the 
connection. If No. 4341 Eighteenth Street wants 
to talk to 1748 Cortlandt Street, for instance, 
the Eighteenth Street central who gets the 4341 
call makes a connection with the operator at 
Cortlandt Street and asks for No. 1748. The 
Cortlandt Street operator goes through the 
operation of testing to see if 1748 is busy, and if 
not she assigns a wire connecting the two ex- 
changes, whereupon in Eighteenth Street one 
plug is put in 4341 switch hole; the twin plug is 
put into the switch hole connecting with the wire 
to Cortlandt Street; at Cortlandt Street the 
same thing is done with No. 1748 pair of plugs. 
The lights glow in both exchanges, notifying 
the operators when the conversation .-is begun 
J 93 



STORIES OF INVENTORS 

and ended, and the operator of Eighteenth 
Street "central" makes the record in the same 
way as she does when both numbers are in 
her own district. 

Besides the calls for numbers within the 
cities there are the out-of-town calls. In this 
case central simply makes connection with 
"Long Distance," which is a separate company, 
though allied with the city companies. "Long 
Distance" makes the connection in much the 
same way as the branch city exchanges. As the 
charges for long-distance calls depend on the 
length of the conversation, so the connection 
is made by an operator whose business it is to 
make a record of the length in minutes of the 
conversation and the place with which the 
city subscriber is connected. An automatic 
time stamp accomplishes this without possi- 
bility of error. 

Sometimes the calls come from a pay station, 
in which case a record must be kept of the time 
occupied. This kind of call is indicated by the 
glow of a red light instead of a white one, and 
so "central" is warned to keep track, and the 
supervisors or monitors who constantly pass 
to and fro can note the kind of calls that come 
in, and so keep tab on the operators. 

Other coloured lights indicate that the chief 
194 



HUH 

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£ 2 



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£ s 

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E- u 



LONG-DIS TA NCE TELEPHON Y 

operator wishes to send out a general order 
and wishes all operators to listen. Another 
indicates that there is trouble somewhere on 
the line which needs the attention of the wire 
chief and repair department. 

The switchboards themselves are made of 
hard, black rubber, and are honeycombed with 
innumerable holes, each of which is connected 
with a subscriber. Below the switchboard is a 
broad shelf in which are set the miniature 
lamps and from which project the brass plugs 
in rows. The flexible cords containing the 
connecting wires are weighted and hang below, 
so that when a plug is pulled out of a socket 
and dropped it slides back automatically to its 
proper place, ready for use. 

Many subscribers nowadays have their own 
private exchanges and several lines running 
to central. Perhaps No. 4341 Eighteenth Street, 
for instance, has 4342 and 4344 as well. This 
in indicated on the switchboard by a line of 
red or white drawn under the three switch- 
holes, so that central, finding one line busy, may 
be able to make connection with one of the 
other two, the line underneath showing at a 
glance which numbers belong to that particular 
subscriber. 

If a subscriber is away temporarily, a plug of 
*95 



STORIES OF INVENTORS 

one colour is inserted in his socket, or if he is 
behind in his payments to the company a plug 
of another colour is put in, and if the service to 
his house is discontinued still another plug 
notifies the operator of the fact, and it remains 
there until that number is assigned to a new 
subscriber. 

The operators sit before the switchboard in 
high swivel chairs in a long row, with their 
backs to the centre of the room. 

From the rear it looks as if they were weaving 
some intricate fabric that unravels as fast as it 
is woven. Their hands move almost faster 
than the eye can follow, and the patterns made 
by the criss-crossed cords of the connecting 
plugs are constantly changing, varying from 
minute to minute as the colours in a kaleido- 
scope form new designs with every turn of 
the handle. 

Into the exchange pour all the throbbing 
messages of a great city. Business propositions, 
political deals, scientific talks, and words of com- 
fort to the troubled, cross and recross each other 
over the black switchboard. The wonder is that 
each message reaches the ear it was meant 
for, and that all complications, no matter how 
knotty, are immediately unravelled. 

In the cities the telephone is a necessity. 
196 




M 

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Oh n» 

3 1 
8 J 

£ S 

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LONG-DISTANCE TELEPHONY 

Business engagements are made and contracts 
consummated ; brokers keep in touch with their 
associates on the floors of the exchanges; the 
patrolmen of the police force keep their chief 
informed of their movements and the state of 
the districts under their care; alarms of fire 
are telephoned to the fire-engine houses, and 
calls for ambulances bring the swift wagons on 
their errands of mercy ; even wreckers telephone 
to their divers on the bottom of the bay, and 
undulating electrical messages travel to the 
tops of towering sky-scrapers. 

In Europe it is possible to hear the latest 
opera by paying a small fee and putting a 
receiver to your ear, and so also may lazy 
people and invalids hear the latest news with- 
out getting out of bed. 

The farmers of the West and in eastern 
States, too, have learned to use the barbed 
wire that fences off their fields as a means of 
communicating with one another and with dis- 
tant parts of their own property. 

Mr. Pupin has invented an apparatus by 
which he hopes to greatly extend the distance 
over which men may talk, and it has even been 
suggested that Uncle Sam and John Bull may 
in the future swap stories over a transatlantic 
telephone line. 

197 



STORIES OF INVENTORS 

The marvels accomplished suggest the possi- 
ble marvels to come. Automatic exchanges, 
whereby the central telephone operator is done 
away with, is one of the things that inventors 
are now at work on. 

The one thing that prevents an unlimited 
use of the telephone is the expensive wires 
and the still more expensive work of putting 
them underground or stringing them overhead. 
So the capping of the climax of the wonders of 
the telephone would be wireless telephony, 
each instrument being so attuned that the 
undulations would respond only to the corre- 
sponding instrument. This is one of the prob- 
lems that inventors are even now working 
upon, and it may be that wireless telephones 
will be in actual operation not many years 
after this appears in print. 



198 



A MACHINE THAT THINKS 




THE LAlNSTON TYPE-SETTER KEYBOARD 

As each key is pressed a corresponding perforation is made in the roll of 

paper shown at the top of the machine. Each perforation 

stands for a character or a space 



A MACHINE THAT THINKS 

A Typesetting Machine That Makes 
Mathematical Calculations 

FOR many years it was thought impossible 
to find a short cut from author's 
manuscript to printing press — that is, to 
substitute a machine for the skilled hands that 
set the type from which a book or magazine is 
printed. Inventors have worked at this problem, 
and a number have solved it in various ways. 
To one who has seen the slow work of hand 
typesetting as the compositor builds up a 
long column of metal piece by piece, letter by 
letter, picking up each character from its 
allotted space in the case and placing it in its 
proper order and position, and then realises 
that much of the printed matter he sees is so 
produced, the wonder is how the enormous 
amount of it is ever accomplished. 

In a page of this size there are more than a 
thousand separate pieces of type, which, if set by 
hand, would have to be taken one by one and 
201 



STORIES OF INVENTORS 

placed in the compositor's "stick"; then when 
the line is nearly set it would have to be spaced 
out, or "justified," to fill out the line exactly. 
Then when the compositor's "stick" is full, or 
two and a half inches have been set, the type has 
to be taken out and placed in a long channel, 
or "galley." Each of these three operations 
requires considerable time and close applica- 
tion, and with each change there is the possi- 
bility of error. It is a long, expensive process. 

A perfect typesetting machine should take 
the place of the hand compositor, setting the 
type letter by letter automatically in proper 
order at a maximum speed and with a minimum 
chance of error. 

These three steps of hand composition, slow, 
expensive, open to many chances of mistake, 
have been covered at one stride at five times 
the speed, at one-third the cost, and much 
more accurately by a machine invented by 
Mr. Tolbert Lanston. 

The operator of the Lanston machine sits at 
a keyboard, much like a typewriter in appear- 
ance, containing every character in common 
use (225 in all), and at a speed limited only by 
his dexterity he plays on the keys exactly as 
a typewriter works his machine. This is the sum 
total of human effort expended. The machine 
202 



A MACHINE THAT THINKS 

does all the rest of the work; makes the calcu- 
lations and delivers the product in clean, 
shining new type, each piece perfect, each in 
its place, each line of exactly the right length, 
and each space between the words mathe- 
matically equal — absolutely "justified." It is 
practically hand composition with the human 
possibility of error, of weariness, of inattention, 
of ignorance, eliminated, and all accomplished 
with a celerity that is astonishing. 

This machine is a" type-casting machine as 
well as a typesetter. It casts the type (indi- 
vidual characters) it sets, perfect in face and 
body, capable of being used in hand composition 
or put to press directly from the machine and 
printed from. 

As each piece of type is separate, alterations 
are easily made. The type for correction, which 
the machine itself casts for the purpose — a 
lot of a's, b's, etc. — is simply substituted for 
the words misspelled or incorrectly used, as 
in hand composition. 

The Lanston machine is composed of two 
parts, the keyboard and the casting-setting 
machine. The keyboard part may be placed 
wherever convenient, away from noise or any- 
thing that is likely to distract or interrupt the 
operator, and the perforated roll of paper pro- 
203 



STORIES OF INVENTORS 

duced by it (which governs the setting machine) 
may be taken away as fast as it is finished. 
In the setting-casting machine is located the 
brains. The five-inch roll of paper, perforated 
by the keyboard machine (a hole for every 
letter) , gives the signal by means of compressed 
air to the mechanism that puts the matrix (or 
type mould) in position and casts the type 
letter by letter, each character following the 
proper sequence as marked by the perforations 
of the paper ribbon. By means of an indicator 
scale on the keyboard the operator can tell 
how many spaces there are between the words 
of the line and the remaining space to be 
filled out to make the line the proper width. 
This information is marked by perforations on 
the paper ribbon by the pressure of two keys, 
and when the ribbon is transferred to the 
casting machine these space perforations so 
govern the casting that the line of type de- 
livered at the "galley" complete shall be of 
exactly the proper length, and the spaces 
between the words be equal to the infini- 
tesimal fraction of an inch. 

The casting machine is an ingenious 

mechanism of many complicated parts. In 

a word, the melted metal (a composition of 

zinc and lead) is forced into a mold of the 

204 



A MACHINE THAT THINKS 

letter to be cast. Two hundred and twenty- 
five of these moulds are collected in a steel 
frame about three inches square, and cool water 
is kept circulating about them, so that almost 
immediately after the molten metal is injected 
into the lines and dots of the letter cut in the 
mould it hardens and drops into its slot, a 
perfect piece of type. 

All this is accomplished at a rate of four or 
five thousand "ems" per hour of the size of 
type used on this page. The letter M is the 
unit of measurement when the amount of any 
piece of composition is to be estimated, and is 
written "em." 

If this page were set by hand (taking a 
compositor of more than average speed as a 
basis for figuring), at least one hour of steady 
work would be required, but this page set by 
the Lanston machine (the operator being of the 
same grade as the hand compositor) would 
require hardly more than fifteen minutes from 
the time the manuscript was put into the 
operator's hands to the delivery complete of 
the newly cast type in galleys ready to be 
made up into pages, if the process were carried 
on continuously. 

This marvellous machine is capable of set- 
ting almost any size of type, from the minute 
205 



STORIES OF INVENTORS 

" agate" to and including "pica," a letter more 
than one-eighth of an inch high, and a line of 
almost any desired width, the change from one 
size to any other requiring but a few minutes. 
The Lanston machine sets up tables of figures, 
poetry, and all those difficult pieces of compo- 
sition that so try the patience of the hand 
compositor. 

It is called the monotype because it casts and 
sets up the type piece by piece. 

Another machine, invented by Mergenthaler, 
practically sets up the moulds, by a sort of 
typewriter arrangement, for a line at a time, 
and then a casting is taken of a whole line at 
once. This machine is used much in news- 
paper offices, where the cleverness of the com- 
positor has to be depended upon and there 
is little or no time for corrections. Several 
other machines set the regular type that is 
made in type foundries, the type being placed 
in long channels, all of the same sort, in the 
same grooves, and slipped or set in its proper 
place by the machine operated by a man at 
the keyboard. These machines require a sep- 
arate mechanism that distributes each type in 
its proper place after use, or else a separate 
compositor must be employed to do this by 
hand. The machines that set foundry type, 
206 




WHERE THE "BRAINS" ARE LOCATED 

The perforations in the paper ribbon (shown in the upper left-hand part of 

the picture) govern the action of the machine so that the proper 

characters are cast in their proper order, and also the spaces 

between the words 



.4 MACHINE THAT THINKS 

moreover, require a great stock of it, just as 
many hundred pounds of expensive type are 
needed for hand composition. 

Though a machine has been invented that 
will put an author's words into type, no 
mechanism has yet been invented that will 
do away with type altogether. It is one of 
the problems still to be solved. 



207 



HOW HEAT PRODUCES COLD 
ARTIFICIAL ICE-MAKING 




THE TYPE MOULDS 
Moulds for 225 different characters are contained in this frame 




THE FINISHED PRODUCT 

As the type is cast in its consecutive order it is passed into a long channel 

or "galley," Vv-here it can easily be broken up into pages or any 

form desired. Corrections are usually made when 

the type is in this form 



HOW HEAT PRODUCES COLD 
ARTIFICIAL ICE-MAKING 

/^\NE midsummers day a fleet of United 
^^ States war-ships were lying at anchor in 
Guantanamo Bay, on the southern coast of 
Cuba. The sky was cloudless, and the tropic 
sun shone so fiercely on the decks that the bare- 
footed Jackies had to cross the unshaded spots 
on the jump to save their feet. 

An hour before the quavering mess - call 
sounded for the midday meal, when the sun 
was shining almost perpendicularly, a boat's 
crew from one of the cruisers were sent over 
to the supply - ship for a load of beef. Not a 
breath was stirring, the smooth surface of the 
bay reflected the brazen sun like a mirror, 
and it seemed to the oarsmen that the salt 
water would scald them if they should touch it. 
Only a few hundred yards separated the two 
vessels, yet the heat seemed almost beyond 
endurance, and the shade cast by the tall steel 
sides of the supply - steamer, when the boat 
reached it, was as comforting as a cool drink 
211 



STORIES OF INVENTORS 

to a thirsty man. The oars were shipped, and 
one man was left to fend off the boat while the 
others clambered up the swaying rope-ladder, 
crossed the scorching decks on the run, and 
went below. In two minutes they were in the 
hold of the refrigerator -ship, gathering the 
frost from the frigid cooling - pipes and snow- 
balling each other, while the boat-keeper out- 
side of the three-eighth-inch steel plating was 
fanning himself with his hat, almost dizzy from 
the quivering heat-waves that danced before 
his eyes. The great sides of beef, hung in rows, 
were frozen as hard as rock. Even after the 
strip of water had been crossed on the return 
journey and the meat exposed to the full, un- 
obstructed glare of the sun the cruiser's mess- 
cooks had to saw off their portions, and the 
remainder continued hard as long as it lasted. 
But the satisfaction of the men who ate that 
fresh American beef cannot be told. 

Cream from a famous dairy is sent to par- 
ticular patrons in Paris, France, and it is known 
that in one instance, at least, a bottle of cream, 
having failed to reach the person to whom it 
was consigned, made the return transatlantic 
voyage and was received in New York three 
weeks after its first departure, perfectly sweet 
and good. Throughout the entire journey it 
212 



ARTIFICIAL ICE-MAKING 

was kept at freezing temperature by artificial 
means. These are but two striking examples of 
wonders that are performed every day. 

Cold, of course, is but the absence of heat, 
and so refrigerating machinery is designed to 
extract the heat from whatever substance it 
is desired to cool. The refrigerating agent 
used to extract the heat from the cold chamber 
must in turn have the heat extracted from it, 
and so the process must be continuous. 

Water, when it boils and turns into steam or 
vapour, is heated by or extracts heat from the 
fire, but water vapourises at a high temperature 
and so cannot be used to produce cold. Other 
fluids are much more volatile and evaporate 
much more easily. Alcohol when spilt on the 
hand dries almost instantly and leaves a feeling 
of cold — the warmth of the hand boils the 
alcohol and turns it into vapour, and in doing so 
extracts the heat from the skin, making it cold; 
now, if the evaporated alcohol could be caught 
and compressed into its liquid form again you 
would have a refrigerating machine. 

Alcohol is expensive and inflammable, and 
many other volatile substances have been dis- 
carded for the one or the other reason. Of all 
the fluids that have been tried, ammonia has 
been found to work most satisfactorily ; it evap- 
213 



STORIES OF INVENTORS 

orates at a low temperature, is non-inflammable, 
and is comparatively cheap. 

The hold of the supply-ship mentioned at the 
head of this chapter was a vast refrigerator, 
but no ice was used except that produced 
mechanically by the power in the ship. To 
produce the cold in the hold of the ship it was 
necessary to extract the heat in it ; to accomplish 
this, coils ran round the space filled with cold 
brine, which, as it grew warm, drew the heat 
from the air. The brine in turn circulated 
through a tank containing pipes filled with 
ammonia vapour which extracted the heat 
from it; the brine then was ready to circulate 
through the coils in the hold again and extract 
more heat. The heat - extracting or cooling 
power of the ammonia is exerted continually 
by the process described below. Ammonia 
requires heat to expand and turn into vapour, 
and this heat it extracts from the substance 
surrounding it. In this marine refrigerating 
machine the ammonia got the heat from the 
brine in the tank, then it was drawn by a pump 
from the pipes in the tank, compressed by 
a power compressor, and forced into a second 
coil. The second coil is called a condenser 
because the vapour was there condensed into a 
fluid again. Over the pipes of the condenser 
214 



ARTIFICIAL ICE-MAKING 

cool water dripped constantly and carried off 
the heat in the ammonia vapour inside the coils 
and so condensed it into a fluid again — just as 
cold condenses steam into water. The com- 
pressor-pump then forced the fluid ammonia 
through a small pipe from the condenser coils 
to the cooling coils in the tank of brine. The 
pipes of the cooling coils are much larger than 
those of the condenser, and as the fluid ammonia 
is forced in a fine spray into these large pipes 
and the pressure is relieved it expands or boils 
into the larger volume of vapour and in so doing 
extracts heat from the brine. The pump 
draws the heated vapour out, the compressor 
makes it dense, and the coils over which the cool 
water flows condenses it into fluid again, and 
so the circuit continues — through cooler, 
pump, compressor, and condenser, back into the 
cooling-tank. 

In the meantime, the cold brine is being 
pumped through the pipes in the hold of the 
ship, where it extracts the heat from the air 
and the rows of sides of beef and then returns to 
the cooling - tank. In the refrigerating plant, 
then, of the supply-ship, there were two heat- 
extracting circuits, one of ammonia and the 
other of brine. Brine is used because it freezes 
at a very low temperature and continues to 
215 



STORIES OF INVENTORS 

flow when unsalted water would be frozen 
solid. The ammonia is not used direct in the 
pipes in a big space like the hold of a ship, 
because so much of it would be required, and 
then there is always danger of the exposed 
pipes being broken and the dangerous fumes 
released. 

Opposite as it may seem, heat is required to 
produce cold — for steam is necessary to drive 
the compressor and pump of a refrigerating 
plant, and fire of some sort is necessary to make 
steam. 

The first artificial refrigerating machines 
produced cold by compressing and expanding 
air, the compressed air containing the heat being 
cooled by jets of cool water spirted into the 
cylinder containing it, then the compressed air 
was released or expanded into a larger chamber 
and thereby extracted the heat from brine or 
whatever substance surrounded it. 

It is in the making of ice, however, that 
refrigerating machinery accomplishes its most 
surprising results. It was said in the writer's 
hearing recently that natural ice costs about as 
much when it was delivered at the docks or 
freight-yards of the large cities of the North 
as the product of the ice-machine. Of course, 
the manufactured ice is produced near the spot 
216 



ARTIFICIAL ICE-MAKING 

where it is consumed, and there is little loss 
through melting while it is being stored or 
transported, as in the case of the natural product. 

There are two ways of making ice — or, rather, 
two methods using the same principle. 

In the can system, a series of galvanized-iron 
cans about three and a half feet deep, eight 
inches wide, by two and a half feet long are 
suspended or rested in great tanks of brine 
connecting with the cooling-tank through which 
the pipes containing the ammonia vapour circu- 
lates. The vapour draws the heat from the brine, 
and the brine, which is kept moving constantly, 
in turn extracts the heat from the distilled 
water in the cans. While this method produces 
ice quickly, it is difficult to get ice of perfect 
clearness and purity, because the water in the 
can freezes on the sides, gradually getting 
thicker, retaining and concentrating in the 
centre any impurities that may be in the 
water. The finished cake, therefore, almost 
always has a white or cloudy appearance in 
the centre, and is frequently discolored. 

In an ice-plant operated on the can system a 
great many blocks are freezing at once — in fact, 
the whole floor of a great room is honeycombed 
with trap-doors, a door for each can. The 
freezing is done in rotation, so that one group 
217 



STORIES OF INVENTORS 

of cans is being emptied of their blocks of ice 
while others are still in process of congealing, 
while still others are being filled with fresh 
water. When the freezing is complete, jets of 
steam or quick immersion of the can in hot 
water releases the cake and the can is ready 
for another charge. 

The plate system of artificial ice-making does 
away with the discoloration and the cloudiness, 
because the water containing the impurities or 
the air-bubbles is not frozen, but is drawn off 
and discarded. 

In the plate system, great permanent tanks 
six feet deep and eight to twelve feet wide and 
of varying lengths are used. These tanks con- 
tain the clean, fresh water that is to be frozen 
into great slabs of ice. Into the tanks are 
sunk flat coils of pipe covered with smooth, 
metal plates on either side, and it is through 
these pipes that the ammonia vapour flows. 
The plates with the coils of pipe between them 
fit in the tank transversely, partitioning it off 
into narrow cells six feet deep, about twenty- 
two inches wide, and eight or ten feet long. 
In operation, the ammonia vapour flows through 
the pipes, chilling the plates and freezing the 
water so that a gradually thickening film of 
ice adheres to each side of each set of plates. 
218 



ARTIFICIAL ICE-MAKING 

As the ice gets thicker the unfrozen water 
between the slabs containing the impurities and 
air-bubbles gets narrower. When the ice on 
the plates is eight or ten inches thick very 
little of the unfrozen water remains between 
the great cakes, but it contains practically all 
the impurities. When the ice on the plates is 
thick enough, the ammonia vapour is turned off 
and steam forced through the pipes so the cakes 
come off readily, or else plates, cakes, and all 
are hoisted out of the tank and the ice melted 
off. The ice, clear and perfect, is then sawed into 
convenient sizes and shipped to consumers or 
stored for future use. Sometimes the plates or 
partitions are permanent, and, with the coils 
of pipes beteen them, cold brine is circulated, 
but in either case the two surfaces of ice do not 
come together, there being always a film of 
water between. 

Still another method produces ice by forcing 
the clean water in extremely fine spray into a 
reservoir from which the air has been exhausted 
— into a vacuum, in other words; the spray 
condenses in the form of tiny particles of ice, 
which are attached to the walls of the reservoir. 
The ice grows thicker as a carpet of snow in- 
creases, one particle falling on and freezing to 
the others until the coating has reached the 
219 



STORIES OF INVENTORS 

required thickness, when it is loosened and cut 
up in cakes of convenient size. The vacuum 
ice is of marble-like whiteness and appearance, 
but is perfectly pure, and it is said to be quite 
as hard. 

More and more artificial ice is being used, 
even in localities where ice is formed naturally 
during parts of the year. 

Many of the modern hotels are equipped 
with refrigerating plants where they make their 
own ice, cool their own storage-rooms, freeze the 
water in glass carafes for the use of their guests, 
and even cool the air that is circulated through 
the ventilating system in hot weather. In 
many large apartment-houses the refrigerators 
built in the various separate suites are kept 
at a freezing temperature by pipes leading to 
a refrigerating plant in the cellar. The con- 
venience and neatness of this plan over the 
method of carrying dripping cakes from floor to 
floor in a dumb-waiter is evident. 

Another use of refrigerating plants that is 
greatly appreciated is the making of artificial 
ice for skating-rinks. An artificial ice skating- 
rink is simply an ice machine on a grand scale — 
the ice being made in a great, thin, flat cake. 
Through the shallow tanks containing the fresh 
water coils of pipe through which flows the 
220 



ARTIFICIAL ICE-MAKING 

ammonia vapour or the cold brine are run from 
end to end or from side to side so that the whole 
bottom of the tank is gridironed with pipes, 
the water covering the pipes is speedily frozen, 
and a smooth surface formed. When the 
skaters cut up the surface it is flooded and 
frozen over again. 

So efficient and common have refrigerating 
plants become that artificially cooled water is 
on tap in many public places in the great cities. 
Theatres are cooled during hot weather by a 
portion of the same machinery that supplies 
the heat in winter, and it is not improbable that 
every large establishment, private or public, 
will in the near future have its own refrigerating 
plant. 

Inventors are now at work on cold-air stoves 
that draw in warm air, extract the heat from 
it, and deliver it purified and cooled by many 
degrees. 

Even the people of this generation, therefore, 
may expect to see their furnaces turned into 
cooling machines in summer. Then the ice- 
man will cease from troubling and the ice-cart 
be at rest. 



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